


Holding Out

by bigblackdog



Series: Holding Out [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Friends With Benefits, Getting Together, M/M, Raising Harry Potter, Rimming, Unresolved Sexual Tension, emotional orgasms, so many feelings, so many queer feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-29 09:17:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15726465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigblackdog/pseuds/bigblackdog
Summary: On Halloween, 1981 Sirius and Remus abscond with Harry despite their recently rocky relationship.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smelslikeart](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=smelslikeart).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please visit smelslikeart at their tumblr!  
> https://www.tumblr.com/search/smelslikeart
> 
> thank you to the mods of the wolfstar big bang fest, especially nacho for gently suggesting a deadline extension instead of dropping out. 
> 
> and thank you to smelslikeart for sticking with me and drawing the most gorgeous accompanying images!
> 
> and thank you if you've listened to me panic about this story for the last seven months, especially hypocorism and earlybloomingparentheses. 
> 
> and another thank you to ebp for beta-ing this story. i'm fairly certain i would not have finished this without you and absolutely certain it wouldn't be as good (for reasons beyond just beta-ing).

Remus wakes up to Sirius looming over him, Harry in his arms.

 

"We need a Christmas tree," he says.  Remus mumbles ok and cocoons himself further in the blankets. He closes his eyes but can still feel Sirius standing over him.

 

Remus squints up at him. "D’you mean now?"

 

Sirius shifts Harry from one arm to the other, and even half asleep Remus watches the muscles of his arms shift, the line of tension carried from bicep to forearm, the sharp lines of him. "Well, yea."

 

Remus sits up to get a good look out of the window and confirms what he already knew-- it's still dark outside-- he says as much, flopping down onto the bed.

 

"I've been up since 3:30," Sirius says by way of explanation. Of course he has-- Harry rarely sleeps through the night because they can’t set him down a moment without insistent screams and cries.

 

They've tried everything-- tried distracting him with colorful puffs of smoke and dancing stuffed dragons and Remus read to him and Sirius sang Queen. Once they tried to stick it out, thinking maybe they were giving in too soon, but Harry sobbed like the world was ending, tears falling continuously down his face, pudgy arms reaching for them until Remus, stomach clinched, said _this can't be right_. And so they've held him since, everywhere and all the time, taking turns eating and showering and attempting abortive snatches of sleep.

 

"S'still dark outside," Remus slurs again, but Sirius doesn't budge.

 

"Come on, for Harry." Sirius says.

 

Harry stares down at Remus with those serious green eyes.

 

“You arsehole, you can’t use Harry whenever you want something.”

 

Sirius shrugs, shit-eating grin telling Remus he fully intends to unapologetically invoke Harry’s name for anything from baby formula to cigarettes. Not that they’ve smoked much lately.  James had no tolerance for it around his son, not even the smell on their clothes.

 

With a groan and a metallic creak Remus lumbers up from the flaking enameled bed frame and the faded floral pillow that smells strongly of Sirius’ hair. It’s just a few steps out of the tiny bedroom into the single room functioning as living room and kitchen and Remus, still half asleep, startles at the sight. Sirius has charmed never-melt icicles to hang from the window sills and garlanded the steel stove with red and gold tinsel which strikes Remus as not particularly fire-safe. In the corner there are poinsettias sprouting up, growing leaves, blooming large red flowers, and then shrinking down to start all over again. The room is full of flocks of paper swans a-swimming, maids a-milking and hens a-laying, all inexplicably drawn to fluttering around his great aunt’s much beloved Tiffany lamps. There is even a row of jolly ceramic Santas lined up among Sirius’ collection of abandoned tea mugs; Remus see a familiar looking chip on one and wonders if some of the Santas used to _be_ abandoned tea mugs.

 

In the winking red glow of too many Christmas lights, Remus can see Sirius is looking a little glazed in a slightly hysterical way, a dangerous look that at Hogwarts usually preceded filling dungeon classrooms with fluorescent everlasting bubbles or spelling the Slytherin section of the Quidditch stadium with sticking spells. Remus doesn't say anything about the decorations, like _ceramic Santas, Sirius, really?_ And instead, quickly pulls on his wellies and a coat covered in Padfoot hair and escapes the glaring glow, out into the dark to find a Christmas tree.

 

Remus doesn't have much luck. Christmas trees don't grow in the Fens, a fact that never seemed like a crisis in the few months the tiny cottage and the great swath of rural land it’s on was used only for his transformations. Remus regrets suggesting they come here, a panicked split second decision that he must grudgingly admit is still their best option. But the cottage was intended to house one widowed retiree, not two broken war veterans and their secret baby.

 

Remus' great aunt had died in June, gifting the land to his father, who managed to sound stilted and uncomfortable even in a letter offering it to Remus for full moons. They’re out in the middle of mostly empty farmland, bounded on one side by a canal and surrounded otherwise by marshes.

 

The wind blows sharp through the hinges of the small smudgy window in the bathroom, so that lukewarm showers are even colder stepping out. And Sirius and Remus are taking turns sleeping with Harry in the twin bed, but sleeping with Harry means hardly sleeping, and sleeping on the couch is just the same. There’s nothing so luxurious as a telly, but neither did Great Aunt Laura read much, instead spending all her time crocheting horrible doilies and not-so-horrible blankets. Remus can’t crochet, but after two months of sleeplessly staring at Sirius, he’s ready to learn.

 

He and Sirius have spent two months piled into the tiny cottage and the daily chipping away at the mountain of tasks required to keep a baby alive is starting to give way to the deeply hollowed cave of grief just beneath. And everywhere Remus looks to keep himself from falling into bottomless depths, he sees Sirius. Sirius’ hair all over the bathroom, shower steam that smells of him somehow always lingering, Sirius’ half drunk cups abandoned on top of half read magazines. His strong, long fingers, sharply lined hands stirring formula, changing diapers, compulsively brushing back Harry’s thick hair to look at the scar zigzagging across his forehead.

 

One small cottage cannot contain all the things they’re not saying about Lily and James and Harry’s desperate wailing for his parents and the great swell of Remus’ longing for Sirius and his anger at Sirius and his anger at the war and the seething, unfathomable grief-- a grief beyond his own comprehension even though it belongs to him, that stays lodged underneath his ribs to poke at him every time he tries to take a deep breath.

 

So Remus takes shallow breaths. And tries to remind himself that it’s a place warded to the nines, and known only to Remus and Sirius, since James had already been in hiding, and Peter... Peter had missed the last few transformations.

 

He tries to remind himself of the long exhale of relief he used to feel looking out at the flat marshlands, reeds and patches of long grasses in soft reds and purples. The relief during transformations of the enclosed safety of watery borders and the joy of running through clear, wide and windy fields instead of crowded-damp-close. There’s a lot of sky to be seen out here, and he’d walk for hours except that the few times he’s tried, he comes back to find Sirius standing anxiously in the doorway with his wand in one hand and Harry in the crook of his other arm. Ushering Remus inside with chatter about the shower making a funny noise or the stove letting smoke out into the room, conditions Remus has never found to be true. Still, Remus lets himself linger a little while, it’s his Christmas present to himself, before he walks back to their claustrophobic little cottage.

 Remus returns with a damp, borderline rotting log, to find Sirius and Harry standing at the hob by the kettle.

 

"What is that?" Sirius says, looking affronted at Remus' log.

 

"You didn't really think I'd find a Christmas tree out there, yeah?"

 

The kettle whistles and Sirius pours water into two mugs, Harry balanced on one hip. "I don't know. I thought you might find something with more than just a passing resemblance to a tree."

 

Remus picks up his mug and shrugs.

 

"For Harry, Remus," Sirius says again. “Do you really want this child to celebrate Christmas with a rotting log for a tree?” Sirius asks, pretending great indignance.

 

Remus privately thinks this whole situation has very little to do with what he wants. But then Sirius switches Harry from one arm to the other and Harry's little hand desperately clutches at his shirt, pulling it across his body, bunching up at his neck on one side and exposing a bit of Sirius’ sharp collarbone on the other. It's all more than a little absurd and Remus feels helpless in the face of Sirius compulsively decorating a rundown shack and Harry's serious, staring eyes. Remus sets down his mug and looks up at Sirius.

 

"We'll transfigure it. I'll transfigure it," He promises.

 

“I’m pretty sure you can’t transfigure something dead into something living, unless you want to perform some dangerous necromantic rituals in the name of Christmas.”

 

“Anything for Harry.”

 

Sirius genuinely laughs. “We’ll just… decorate the log.”

 

“Uh, yea. A yule log.”

 

“Right, yea.”

 

Remus makes ham sandwiches for Christmas lunch and, from the slightly enclosed safety of the kitchen, watches Sirius wrap Harry’s presents. He’s humming Bang a Gong and looking unfairly handsome in a green and red crocheted hat dug out of his aunt’s crochet basket. He stops every once in a while to bend over and tickle Harry with the bauble end of the hat; Harry smiles and gurgles but he hasn’t laughed yet. Beneath the hat and between the tickling, Remus can see the dark circles under Sirius’ eyes from across the room. He’s always been thin, but in a rangy way, sexy like Bolan, but lately Remus looks at the line of his shoulder blades beneath his shirt and tries to remember if they were always so prominent.

 

Remus’ hands start to shake trying to spread mayonnaise on the bread and he has to set the knife down and press his hands firmly to the countertop.

 

“You alright?” Sirius asks, pausing right in the middle of tying a bow, one long finger pressing a knot in place.

 

“Yea, m’fine,” Remus says, hastily piling the sandwiches on a plate and bringing them over.

 

Remus holds Harry in his lap while Sirius eats and tries to entertain him by charming little red and gold mushrooms to grow on the log. Sirius arranges Harry’s presents around the log (a toy broomstick, like he had before, a stuffed wolf, some magical pink goop that boasts it’s nonstick and self-cleaning, hours of fun) and adds some fairy lights around Remus’ attempt at festive Christmas mushrooms. Remus makes cocoa, bringing Sirius a hot mug, and Harry a lukewarm sippy cup, which he sucks down with singular purpose and then smacks against the floor. Remus pries the cup gingerly from his strong little hand and replaces it with a present to smack instead.

 

“Harry, look! Like this, love,” Sirius says, tearing a bit of the wrapping paper, hoping Harry will continue. Harry watches seriously while Sirius is tearing, but as soon as he’s done, goes back to smacking the box. Sirius unwraps it for him. Inside is the toy broomstick.

 

Remus remembers James chasing after Harry, cooing that he was going to catch him, while Harry flew around the room giggling madly. He remembers Lily proudly prompting Harry to say the beginnings of a word that sounded like boomsick, always shouted. Now, Harry sits in Sirius’ lap looking at the broom like he doesn’t know what to do. Sirius looks up at Remus with much the same expression. Remus crawls forward and takes the broom out of the box, setting it to hover at the right height for Harry.

 

“We’ll hold your hands,” Remus says, always unsure how he’s supposed to _talk_ to a baby. “Padfoot and Uncle Remus will hold your hands,” he tries again. “Here, um, put him on the broom, we’ll hold him.”

 

But as Sirius lifts Harry off his lap and over the broom Harry starts to scream and cry, violently kicking his little legs out and reaching for Remus. Remus quickly takes him, tucking him into his neck and holding him close. Remus feels the rumbling of an imminent fault line, rending the cotton wool they’ve layered over their grief and anger and shock for the last two months. He leans one cheek against Harry’s soft head and looks at Sirius. Sirius has dislodged his red and green hat running his hands through his hair, gripping at it as his eyes roam over the room-- the icicles, the fluttering paper birds and fairy lights and ceramic Santas-- and he deflates.

 

“Oh my god,” he says. “This is ridiculous.”

 

A laugh takes Remus by surprise. “Oh, do you think it’s a touch overdone?”

 

Sirius drags his hands down his face and groans. “Oh my god! Why didn’t you tell me!?”

 

“I don’t know, I’ve started to quite like the swarms of Christmas birds.”

 

Sirius laughs too, and in just that moment, has to swat at a swan a-swimming in his ear. “Christ.”

 

Remus looks around again at the cottage, every surface layered in crochet and twinkle lights, Sirius’ leather jacket thrown over the arm of the couch, the tufts of Padfoot hair that have started to collect in the corners, and can’t help the hysterical laughter that bursts out of him.

 

“Remus, what are we even doing?” Sirius gets out between laughs.

 

Remus just looks at him and shakes his head, now silently shaking with laughter. Sirius steps around the Christmas log to wrap his arms around Remus and Harry both and Remus’ breath catches sharply-- too close. Sirius rests his cheek on the other side of Harry’s head, so close to Remus’ own and he can feel Sirius’ arm around the middle of his back, his other hand gripping his arm. Remus is trying to breath through resurfacing giggles, is trying to calm down, but Sirius is _right there_.

 

“What are we doing?” Remus repeats, but without the swell of humor, just an edge of alarm.

 

Sirius moves his hand from Remus’ arm up to his shoulder. “I don’t know.” Sirius’ hand keeps moving, over his collarbone, slender fingers lightly tracing the bone, up to cup his neck, to settle there warm and heavy, and Remus can’t stand it, he reels away with Harry. Remus wants to yell _what are you doing?_ but he doesn’t, he can only stare at Sirius for a long moment, before finding an excuse to look away in the form of readjusting Harry on his hip. Harry-- he still has tears in the corners of his eyes and for a moment Remus feels untethered, floating up and watching the fault line splinter, breaks shooting along unpredictable paths.

 

When Remus looks back, Sirius is rubbing his hand on the back of his neck, eyes downcast, looking so over the top with contrition that Remus has the urge to roll his eyes. They should probably talk about this thing between them, that's been between them since they were sixteen, but all Remus feels is tired.

 

He’s had years to spin and shout phrases in his mind, things he should say to Sirius so piled up in his brain they’ve compressed and hardened into rock. Words have been waiting in there since Sirius first drunkenly kissed Remus the night he ran away from home and then fucked off to James' house in the morning. And Remus, sixteen and twisted up, had spent the rest of the summer piecing together exactly what he wished he'd said, only to get on the train and push Sirius into the tiny train bathroom for a snog. He should have said something back then, back before they'd kissed dozens more times and Remus missed his chance to say _does this mean the same thing to you that it means to me?_

 

Remus knows now that it doesn't. Knew with increasing certainty as they graduated, no longer immediately availble to each other in the same dorm room, Sirius stopping by when James was busy, not stopping by at all at the end of the war.  Sirius is comfort-seeking and impulsive and Remus cannot give in to it, not anymore.

 

"Let's do the rest of the presents," Remus says, getting settled on the floor again with Harry and still avoiding eye contact with Sirius.

 

Remus lets Sirius unwrap the rest, parade them in front of Harry hoping to incite some interest or a laugh. Remus can't really focus, but can’t really care; Sirius is better at the dancing animal bit anyway. He can still feel Sirius’ hand on his neck, a phantom tingle he knows he shouldn’t focus on, but he does anyway.

 

Sirius had put his hand on that spot, that exact spot the night he’d showed up in Remus’ bedroom. Remus had been half asleep, running his fingers lazily through his own hair and enjoying the warm night and the open window when Sirius cracked his bedroom door open and slipped inside. Remus sat up quickly in his bed and watched Sirius take his shoes off by the door, asking quietly if he could stay the night. Remus remembers the confusion and barely restrained hope he had felt as Sirius, smelling like liquor, slid his legs underneath the sheets, right up next to Remus’. Remus stayed propped up on one arm, paralyzed, until Sirius gently tugged at his elbow, _come on Moony, come here_. Sirius pulled Remus closer by the waist, one hand coming to rest on Remus’ neck. Sirius had closed his eyes then, but Remus knew he wasn’t sleeping.

 

Remus thinks of that night all the time, inevitably and with terrible clarity he holds that night in his head when he masturbates, holds himself in the moments of unfulfilled tension of not yet kissing Sirius. Remus remembers the weight and feel of the places Sirius touched and then thinks of the strain and exhilaration of the places he did not touch. He remembers the hand on his neck, the light pressure of Sirius’ thumb on the soft skin there, and Remus imagines _not_ asking Sirius to push a little harder, he imagines _not_ telling him he wants to feel drunk and dizzy under Sirius’ hands. He imagines his hands tingling with the ache and anticipation of running them up Sirius’ leg, pushing into Sirius’ hamstring, Remus suspects, imagines, Sirius would be soft there. Remus thinks of the couple of inches separating him from Sirius. He thinks of his body absolutely humming with desire for Sirius, underneath Sirius’ arms, wonders if Sirius is aware or oblivious to his aching wanting. Remus likes to draw out the anticipation before he’s gone, overwhelmed. He likes the little pockets of space in between those moments, where he can feel like nothing need be acknowledged, nothing is definite, a space where Remus can pretend their relationship and the things that they do with each other exist between designations. A space that is so easily shattered by clear cut kissing.

 

They can’t quite slide back into the rhythm of Christmas after the broom, even though Harry likes his stuffed wolf. The party breaks up when Harry starts bawling, and Sirius takes him to the bedroom for a diaper change. Remus starts to tidy up the torn wrapping paper and plates and cups. He adds a few abandoned tea mugs to the collection and floats them all over to the sink, soft clinks and splashes overtaken by the loud crinkle of paper as Remus shoves the torn wrappings into a trash bag. They’ve made it through Christmas; an arbitrary marker maybe, but at least now there’s nothing on the horizon that demands so much cheer from them.

 

Tidying up the epicenter of Sirius’ wrapping, he uncovers a slim white box that looks like it was meant to be wrapped. Thinking it’s something they’ve forgotten for Harry he opens it and sees a neatly folded stack of pants, all printed with something ridiculous-- green with a print of leering Jack O’lanterns whose eyes and smiles actually glow, bats fluttering around on a dark purple background, black spiders weaving webs over an orange pair. They’re all unaccountably ugly and Remus wonders who on earth would want a pair of pants crawling with spiders, even printed ones.

 

Sirius comes out of the bedroom with Harry halfway dressed in footies and a small bag of dirty nappies he throws in with Remus’ trash.

 

“You bought me underpants?” Remus asks, holding up the offending garments loosely in both hands, like an offering only in the sense that he’d like to be rid of them.

 

“Yeah,” Sirius says, picking up on Remus’ discomfort but clearly confused by it.

 

“Don’t you think that’s a little..?” _Inappropriately intimate, intrusive even._

 

“I thought they were funny.” Sirius says, like it requires no more explanation than that, and disappears into the bathroom with Harry, narrating that Harry’s going to get into his footies and then they’ll brush teeth.

 

Remus collapses onto the couch, knocked flat by the pants and Sirius’ obliviousness. He can see Sirius in the store, chuckling over them and wouldn’t they be even funnier on Moony with his skinny legs and his big sweaters with no awareness beyond that. Sirius has never seen boundaries the way other people do; sometimes he sees the lines he’s crossing and just doesn’t care, and sometimes he doesn’t even see the line, doesn’t know it’s there. The boundary is already blurry between friends who sometimes fuck, even blurrier between friends who stopped fucking during the war, and why did Remus ever expect Sirius to discern the dissipated remains of a boundary that’s as stable and permanent as a line of foam along the shore.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please visit smelslikeart at their tumblr!  
> https://www.tumblr.com/search/smelslikeart


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please visit smelslikeart at their tumblr!  
> https://www.tumblr.com/search/smelslikeart

It’s not Sirius who breaks down first; Remus should have known better-- bloody stubborn. No bad idea is bad enough for Sirius to abandon, even when they’re standing ankle deep in lake sludge or sneaking out of a detention they were given for sneaking out of detention.

 

And, fine, Remus will wade through lake sludge, he’ll risk another detention-- but-- Remus is layering five glamours on himself to do the grocery shopping, hasn’t even sent an owl to his mum, he’s isolating himself in a cottage with a man who is willing to ignore the recent history of not writing to Remus, not dropping by his flat, avoiding his eye at Order meetings. While Remus can’t ignore, can’t stop thinking about the ways they touched and whispered and watched a lifetime ago. Remus is risking his whole person staying here with Sirius and he can’t do it a moment longer.

 

When Remus wakes up the next morning the first thing he sees are the pants he’d thrown haphazardly into the box. Stupid fucking pants. Remus already felt like he was breaking apart, surrounded by bits of Sirius, and now, now Sirius has given him something to _step into_ , to bodily inhabit, and it’s too much. Remus gets up from the couch and stands looking around the room for a moment and feels like he’ll sick up if he stays in this cottage another minute. He grabs a bag and stuffs a change of underwear in, a couple shirts, and his wand. Sirius is in the shower with Harry so he scribbles a note and leaves it next to the kettle and walks right out of the cottage, runs to the edge of the wards and apparates to a dark corner in the first underground station he can think of-- Piccadilly.

 

It’s crowded with morning commuters and smells like smoke and is the exact opposite of the cottage in the Fens. He steps immediately into the crowd of people hustling down the stairs onto the platform. Lets himself get swept up in their purposeful and determined paths. He keeps pace with the men in crisp blue shirts and women with smart leather bags and students in sweatshirts pushed up over their elbows in the trapped heat underground. He feels like he’s flying, carried along by their collective sense of destination through windy tunnels papered with theatre posters, museum exhibition announcements, adverts for razors and alcohol and albums.

 

He takes the first train that arrives at the platform and ends up on the Bakerloo line pressed into a cluster of people that smell like perfume and sweat and smoke and nothing like Sirius. A large group exits at Embankment and Remus’ feet follow before he knows what he’s doing, up through the shiny white tiled tunnels, he skips the escalators and takes the stairs two at a time out to the street, out to the sounds of buses and the smell of the Thames, and lets the crowd lead him back underground, through long tunnels, stepping onto the Circle line behind a man carrying a guitar case on his back that bumps into Remus for three stops, who is then replaced by an older woman with a little wheeled grocery cart, who doesn’t get off until Paddington and Remus follows her out but loses track of her, walking swiftly again, taking whatever tunnel looks the most full of people and ending up back on the Circle line, in a train car that empties quickly so he doesn’t stay long, getting off two stops later at Kensington and transferring, he sways in the corner of a car watching commuters get on and off.

 

Remus rides the trains long enough for the morning rush to taper off, and gets off at King’s Cross. His energy deserts him with the lull in commuters. He wanders slowly through the station, taking the longer walk from the underground platforms to the train station, and finally comes to a stop in front of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.

 

Remus has memories of stories of Hogwarts as far back as he has memories at all. Before he was bitten Remus remembers begging his father for little tidbits of information about Hogwarts, his father’s joking reluctance before he would tell Remus about the talking portraits all over the walls of Hogwarts, the starry ceiling in the Great Hall, the scarlet steam train and hidden platform that took you there. And the years after he was bitten, with his mother at his bedside, thinking he would never see that platform, the train, the ceiling, the portraits-- none of the wonderful things he had been promised.

 

Right now, those seven years when he had everything he never thought he’d have feel like a cruel anomaly, an extended tease. He feels cheated and guilty-- not because he doesn’t have those things, but because his childhood was so marred by painful transformations and rejection and the violence and incredible loss of war that he’s come out the other side an irrevocable mess of a person too broken to know how to get any of those things back. It’s not that they’re unattainable, it’s that Remus is too fucked up to attain them.

 

Remus loses track of time staring blankly at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. There’s nothing to see. Hogwarts’ term doesn’t start for another week at least. There’s no one furtively pushing large trolleys and lining up to disappear. It’s just another brick wall today.

 

He stays long enough to see the after work commuters before finally leaving the train station. He feels unaccountably tired but still decides to walk to his mum’s flat in Camden.

 

It’s the first time he’s been since she moved last year. He didn’t dare visit and risk drawing attention to his Muggle mother, not that he’d had the time to spare anyway, spending months at a time tracking packs of wolves in what seemed like every bloody forest in the British Isles.

 

Remus shuffles and scuffs up the stairs to his mum’s place. He only has one key on his keyring, no others to jingle against, nor any loose change for that matter. The door makes a cracking sound as it’s opened, the thick paint meant to cover all traces of last tenant sticking to an equally thickly painted door frame. Remus dumps his bag at the door-- white walls, questionable carpet, kettle ready and waiting on the hob. He fills the kettle, a metallic echo softly drowned out and listens to the soft white noise of not yet bubbling. He keeps his hands busy, searching out sugar, something else sweet, swallows any and all warning whistles ringing in his head, tunes himself only to the real whistle of a real kettle and white walls, still bare except for a picture of the pope looking benevolently at the sink.

 

It’s a small flat, with a cubby of a kitchen separated from the living room by a low wall. The kitchen table is barely wedged in. His mother’s vibrant red couch looks odd and out of place against the sterile white walls. But the bookcases are the same, paperbacks lining every shelf and spilling over into stacks carefully positioned on the edge, a bottom shelf with records all neatly vertical. The record player sits on the same low table it’s always sat on, a spindly thing his mother painted golden yellow.

 

Remus sits at the kitchen table wedged into the corner by the window. It's not a very exciting view, just the brownstone of another building budged right up next to the fire escapes, some scaffolding and a white construction tarp covering most of the top half of the building.

 

Remus stares out at the white tarp unblinkingly, his tea sits on the table cooling and he can't stop thinking about a sunnier day in June when he'd gotten his letter back from King’s College. Sirius was over, with the excuse of poking around in Remus' pantry for something sweet, but really, James had just moved in with Lily and Sirius couldn't stand to be by himself. The owl that delivered it had swooped in and out quick as a breath, not waiting for a reply; Remus was certain it was a sign he'd been rejected.

 

Remus only applied to one program because there was only one program chaired by a good friend of Albus Dumbledore and his recommendation was the only thing that could get Remus in anywhere. Sirius had wandered over, crumbs from the hob nob he was eating landing on the letter.

 

"Sirius will you..?" Remus had asked in a croak, sliding the letter toward Sirius with a shaking hand.

 

Sirius had torn it open without a moment's pause and barely glanced at the first line before yelling "you got in!" He slapped the letter back down on the table and swiftly crashed his mouth against Remus', hob nob crumbs and all. And Remus had been drunk on good luck and another few years of participating in society and so he'd grabbed his shirt with both hands clenched tight and bit and sucked at his lips as hard as he'd always wanted to. His body stood of its own accord to press closer to Sirius. Remus felt Sirius’ hands come to press hard in the center of his back, thrilling Remus into sucking even harder. He was in university! He was in Sirius’ mouth! No other thought in his head except to push further in.

 

Sirius pulled back.

 

Remus tried to hide how hard he was panting as Sirius held both his biceps, holding him an arm’s length away.

 

“Christ Remus,” Sirius whispered, before he suddenly let out a loud bark of laughter. "You got in! We have to tell James and Peter!"

 

Remus felt momentarily stunned by the free fall of Sirius pulling him in to pushing him back. He scrabbled together a smile for Sirius. “Yeah, let’s floo them.”

 

Intense bursts of connection without intention, brief periods of purpose and access, Remus thinks, taking a mindless sip of cold tea. That’s how things would always go.

 

It’s late when he hears the door open. His breath catches like he might cry, he’s so relieved to see his mum. He’s been missing her with an ache that borders on the desperation of his first few lonely months at Hogwarts. But it’s not his mum who rushes around the corner.

 

Sirius looks wild, Harry wrapped tightly in both arms, his hair is unkempt and his eyes look puffy and red. He gapes at Remus sitting at the kitchen table. "Fuck." He says, sagging against the wall. Then quieter, "Fuck. You're here."

 

Remus is going to have to explain himself even though he doesn’t know enough to explain and what he really wants is to step into Sirius’ arms and bury his face in the soft skin of his neck, he wants to hide himself in Sirius’ thick hair until he feels ok again, maybe forever. "I just-- I just came to have tea with my mum."

 

“I’ve been here twice already,” Sirius says, standing up straight and gaining an edge to his voice.

 

Remus can only stare up at Sirius. He’s frozen, bewildered by himself and ashamed.

 

“I’ve been here twice already!” Sirius shouts this time, his voice breaking. “You arsehole! I thought you’d been kidnapped! I thought they’d taken you!”

 

Remus wishes that was an overreaction, but the Longbottoms had been tortured in their own home just two weeks ago; they'd seen it in the _Prophet_ and Sirius had spent three days jumping at small noises, obstinately trying to hold on to both Harry and his wand.

 

“I couldn’t stay there anymore,” Remus says calmly, as if he didn’t completely break down today, as if he’s explaining a perfectly normal set of circumstances to Sirius. He almost believes it.

 

“You couldn’t stay there anymore,” Sirius repeats flatly. “Do you have any idea--? All day! I’ve been looking for you all day thinking you were--” Sirius’ voice cracks again-- “bloodied up somewhere.”

 

Remus stares up at him, soaked in shame. He knows that terror too.

 

“And you’re fine.” Sirius sags into the wall again and runs his hands through his hair, but halfway through he stops and looks up at Remus again. “You left,” he says, with realization and accusation.

 

Remus swallows hard. He left. He left Harry. For the first time all day, maybe for two months, hell, maybe in the last two years, Remus feels a rush of feeling seep into him, truly as if it’s coming from outside him, water rushing in to fill a crack. His eyes well up as he stares at Sirius and Harry.

 

“You just fucking left, that’s all. Just fucking took off,” Sirius builds into yelling again. “You arsehole! You fucking wanker!”

 

Remus falls back on what he always does, gets calmer, puts on a mask of mild maturity. “I get that you’re angry but let’s talk about this.”

 

“Talk about this,” Sirius says in a mocking voice. “You are so fucked Remus! I’ll yell if I want to! You fucking left!” Sirius has steadily built in volume until he’s roaring and Remus looks to Harry to see if he’s started to take notice.

 

“Get angry Remus! Goddamnit! Yell! Fucking fight with me!”

 

Remus stands up abruptly, bumping the table and sloshing his tea. He wants to yell. He wants to yell that Sirius hasn’t given him a choice, that he’s losing his mind in that cottage, that Sirius has never said a word about thinking Remus was a Death Eater spy and a traitor to their friends. Remus wants to yell that Sirius doesn’t want him and that he feels like a convenience, just an extra pair of hands to heat up the formula and how, how could Sirius ask that of him after everything? How could he not know how unfair it is to ask Remus to live with him and raise a child with him but not want him?

 

He doesn’t end up saying any of those things. He’s so angry he finds a smug and vindictive comfort in withholding his anger because he knows Sirius wants it. Remus adds another layer of sediment to the hardened rock of things he’s never said and sits back down again. He swipes away the tears that didn’t quite fall.

 

Sirius is quiet too, just looking at Remus with unveiled disappointment. Harry is looking up at Sirius, confused, and lets his own shout out into the quiet, as if wondering where all the noise went.

 

Remus’ mum walks in; he hadn’t heard the door open. Hope looks startled and a little angry herself, eyes roving from Remus to Sirius to Harry and back again to her son.

 

“Where have you been?” she demands. “Whose baby is that?” she asks angrily, even as she crosses the kitchen to pull Remus into a hug. Remus holds on for a long time. He’s missed her so much; she smells like garlic and bleach water and looks tired from her shift and Remus hadn’t even realized how desperately he had needed a hug from her.

 

Remus has forgotten his mum’s questions until Sirius quietly answers, “James and Lily’s baby.”

 

Hope pulls back sharply. “James and Lily’s baby.” She looks at Harry, thumping a palm flat against Sirius’ chest and then squarely at Remus. “Sit down and tell me what’s happened.”

 

Remus wearily sits down at the kitchen table, motioning for Sirius to do the same. “Have you still been getting the _Prophet_?”

 

“Of course I have. How else am I supposed to know if you’re still alive?” Hope clangs the kettle down on the hob and glares at Remus. Sirius turns sharply to look at Remus too, seconding the reprimand.

 

“I did what was asked of me.” Doesn’t he always. Sirius opens his mouth clearly ready with a rebuttal, but Hope cuts him off.

 

“Why do you two have Harry Potter?”

 

Sirius holds Harry closer to his chest. “James and Lily would have wanted--” Sirius stops abruptly and doesn’t seem prepared to continue. The anger has melted out of his expression to be replaced with a pleading look.

 

“Sirius is Harry’s godfather. He was always supposed to take him if something… happened.”

 

“I’m still not sure why I haven’t heard from you for _two months_.”

 

Sirius and Remus catch each other’s eye, trying to silently work out between them what to tell Hope, and for a moment it feels like they’re conspiring again.

 

“Professor Dumbledore wants to bring Harry to Lily’s sister,” Remus says slowly, omitting the part where Harry had already been brought to Petunia’s and quietly snatched from the doorstep in the early hours of the morning (and Merlin only knows what Sirius would have done instead if Marlene hadn’t owled him that Sirius had blown through the Leaky Cauldron looking crazed and asking after Peter when they were both supposed to be in hiding).

 

Hope looks between the two of them. “And..?” she prompts impatiently.

 

“And I can’t let him live with her!” Sirius says forcefully.

 

Hope’s face softens. She’s always had a sharp intuition for bullshit and sincerity and a soft spot for Sirius.

 

“She’s horrible,” Remus adds. “Her husband too.”

 

“Good heavens,” Hope says to herself. She stands leaning against the counter for a moment, before pushing off with purpose. She finishes the tea and starts boiling water in a pot, pulls a loaf of plain sandwich bread out of the pantry and spreads mayonnaise on each slice, neatly, just the right amount. Remus studiously watches her decisive movements to avoid catching Sirius’ eye. Eggs are carefully tipped into the pot, chives chopped, a bit of pepper and mustard all efficiently prepared.

 

Harry has fallen asleep in Sirius’ arms, slumped bonelessly against Sirius’ chest, and Remus can hear his even breaths whistling in and out in the quiet of the kitchen. Hope finishes the egg sandwiches and brings a plate over to the table. Remus hands one to Sirius, who can’t quite reach over Harry, and turns to face his mum; he knows there’s something she wants to say. She takes slow bites, chewing just as slowly while she stares at them thoughtfully.

 

“You’re going to raise Harry?” Hope asks, her question carrying a sense of finality.

 

Remus is still for a long time, hoping Sirius will answer and knowing Sirius is waiting for Remus’ answer. He nods.  

 

“You and Sirius? ...Together?”

 

Remus knows what she’s getting at, two men raising a child together, living together, but he won’t give in to her suspicions, particularly since they’re _not_ together.

 

He just nods again, hoping it’s enough to satisfy this line of questioning, but Sirius leans slightly toward him, one hand supporting Harry’s sleeping head. “Yeah?” He asks, “We’re doing this?”

 

Remus grimaces. Sirius has no idea all the things contained in _this_ for Remus, all of the boundaries that are blurred between the letters of that word. What happens to _this_ when Sirius meets someone, a real partner, maybe three years from now? Remus has to guard himself against this eventuality, has to repeat to himself that his role in all of _this_ is temporary; he sets the shield of the stand-in over his heart and says, firmly, specifically, “I’ll help with Harry.”

 

Sirius leans back again, a funny look on his face that Remus doesn't have the energy to decipher.

 

"You'll come back to the cabin?" Sirius asks uneasily.

 

Remus glances at his mum-- he wishes she wasn't here listening to this very domestic conversation and getting the wrong idea. "I can’t live there."

 

Sirius' expression changes in an instant; he's appalled. "But it's safe! It’s the safest place! We agreed!"

 

At Sirius’ outburst, Remus’ mum gets up quietly from the table and takes their plates over to the sink. She stands washing, pointedly looking away from them. Remus can sort of appreciate the illusion of privacy she’s aiming for, but he stills feels keenly exposed.

 

"I can't live there." Remus doesn’t recognize the voice issuing these declarations, usually it's Sirius and James pontificating and designating and punctuating things with a fist in their palms or a finger jabbing. Remus immediately revises, "It was the best idea we could come up with at the time, but there are better options now."

 

"Like what?" Sirius spits out, daring Remus to come up with just one.

 

"A secret keeper, maybe."

 

"Because that worked out so well before."

 

Remus is irritated, he wants to say it certainly wasn’t _his_ fault it didn’t work before, but he takes a steadying breath and looks down at Harry. He's sitting with his legs splayed around Sirius' waist, slumped over with his face smushed up against Sirius' chest. Harry can sleep in absolutely any uncomfortable position, through any amount of noise, as long as he’s on top of a warm body. He once fell asleep on Remus with his head resting on Remus' knee and his little feet propped up by his shoulder.

 

"We'll be just as safe in London--"

 

"Frank and Alice--"

 

"Frank and Alice lived on a fairly remote farm in a sweet small town. If Death Eaters want to find us they'll find us anywhere. At least in London we'll be closer to help." Remus sounds calm, mild.

 

"You can't possibly mean the Ministry," Sirius scoffs.

 

"The Aurors are all right-- Moody’s still there. And we'll be closer to my mum. And St. Mungo's, and _people._ We can't live in isolation out there."

 

"You can't," Sirius mutters.

 

Hope yawns loudly. “Well boys, I’ve had a long shift, I’m off to bed.”

 

“Goodnight mum.” Remus stands to give his mum another long hug and watches her disappear into the hallway before turning back to Sirius. “Look, we don’t have to decide tonight--” Sirius opens his mouth to argue and Remus rushes on, “This place has just as many wards as the cottage, I made sure of it. Let’s just get a good night’s sleep. Please.”

 

“Fine.”

 

Sirius and Harry take Remus’ old bed, a little twin bed he’s had since he was ten, and Remus takes the couch. He does not get a good night’s sleep.

 

* * *

 

Remus hears his mum shuffle into the kitchen just as watery light starts coming in through the windows. He knows just what slippers she's wearing, lumpy things no longer a discernible color, and a dark green velvety robe that she's had his whole life and is now very worn on the backside. He rolls stiffly off the couch and goes to join her in the kitchen. He hadn't managed to sleep much, instead staring out the kitchen window at the white tarp for long hours. He slumps into a chair at the table. His mum comes over to put an arm around him.

 

"Oh Remus," she says, fingers smoothing his hair.

 

Remus presses his face into his mother's soft stomach and lets out a single sob. "Mum."

 

She holds his head in both her hands and bends her body over him and they stay like that for a long time. Long enough for sharp shafts of light to hit the tabletop and rumbling sounds of traffic to reach the windows.

 

She quietly makes tea for them both, adding a splash of milk and a pinch of sugar to Remus', the way she's made his tea since he was twelve and he doesn't have the heart to tell her he doesn't prefer milk and sugar anymore. She brings the mugs over and sits down with him at the table.

 

"I expect to hear from you more often now," she says, suddenly stern. "No more of this disappearing act."

 

Remus doesn't want to disappear either. He doesn't want to be quiet on the edges of things. He doesn't want to be swathed and bound up in doing and saying everything just right and then not saying anything at all. He doesn't know how to explain that to her. Doesn't know how to explain the guilt he has that, with or without the war, he wants to withdraw.

 

How can he promise no more disappearing, when just yesterday, just _yesterday_ he disappeared on a _child,_ a child whose parents disappeared only two months ago. Remus is shit, he's too fucked up to show a child how to live.

 

“I’ll try mum.”

 

Remus spends the entire day telling himself things aren’t nearly as stilted and awkward as he’s making them out to be. Remus still feels a bit like he’s floating outside himself, unsure how to interact with Sirius after having left him in a cottage in the Fens, and unsure how to interact with his mum who definitely suspects something about his relationship with Sirius is off.

 

She also notices something is off with Harry.

 

Late in the afternoon, his mum asks, with the air of someone who has been biding their time out of pity, “Is he always so quiet?”

 

“Umm.” Remus remembers Harry babbling quite a bit, remembers a screaming laugh that Lily could reliably produce by kissing the bottoms of his feet. And later, he remembers a letter from Lily, when they were both in their different undercover locations, that Harry was saying mama and papa and more and ok. And now, aside from occasional burbling spit noises and the much more frequent screaming cries, Harry doesn’t say more or ok (or, Remus thinks with endless sadness, mama and papa). He’d noticed Harry was quieter than before but he was too wrapped up in himself to think to worry about it.

 

His mum is watching him with a sorry look on her face and asks tentatively, “Can he walk yet?”

 

And Remus doesn’t really know if he can, only that he won’t and he feels stupid asking, “Should he be walking?”

 

“How old is he?”

 

“Turned one in July.”

 

Remus can see his mum adding up the months in her head. “Just shy of 18 months,” she pauses, looking carefully at Remus to see how he’s taking this conversation. “Most children start walking around their first birthday.”

 

Remus tugs at his earlobe, feeling the low simmering panic of the last few months reach a rolling boil.

 

“I didn’t know.”

 

“Oh love, nobody knows what they’re doing at first.”

 

“But you know!” Remus says, stumbling over conveying just how little he expected to have a child in his life, how, between being a werewolf and being gay Remus assumed with absolute certainty that parenting a child would never apply to him. It wasn’t even a choice that he made, just a fact of his life. And now, suddenly, it applies to him, and not only does he know nothing about parenting, he’s completely unprepared to work the presence of a child into his brain, to conceive of himself as a parent. He’s never thought eleven years into the future, twenty years into the future; Remus spends all his time reconstructing the past with different words, with a slightly different Remus.

 

“What do I do mum?”

 

“I’m sure there’s better authorities on it than me, but I’d say you’d go a long way by talking to him and walking with him.” Hope pauses a moment, looking like she’s decided not to say what she was about to-- but then, “After you were attacked, all your drawings were different, whole pages of red scribbles when before you’d draw castles with windows and kings and queens and pet penguins. And you started wetting the bed. You’d never wet the bed before. And there was no one to ask, no one who knew how to help my son after he’d been traumatized by a werewolf, there are no books at the library for that. So, I just… let you draw all your scribbles and I’d draw with you, castles and penguins, and I washed the sheets and I laid down next to you so you’d feel safe going to sleep.”

 

Remus stares at his mother with a lump in his throat.

 

Her voice has gotten teary too, “I don’t know if that was the right thing Remus. I just had to do what felt right. I don’t know if I did.”

 

“You did mum.”

 

“Sometimes you have to let go of all your ideas about how you thought you’d make your child’s life just right and just do what you have to, just keep loving them.”

 

She reaches out to hold his hand a moment and then gets up and takes her mug with her to stove top. “Eggs in a basket?”

 

Remus smiles. Eggs in a basket have always been a treat cooked up after full moons and Christmas visits with his dad and sometimes, just bad days.

 

Hope pulls out a heavy skillet and starts warming it and slicing bread. She’s carefully looking down at the bread when she asks, “Is there something you want to tell me about Sirius?”

 

“About Sirius?” Remus asks, trying to hide his nerves.

 

“About you and Sirius.” She’s stopped pretending to slice and is just looking down unseeing at the countertop.

 

“No.” Remus has to clear his throat. “There’s nothing.”

 

“All right love,” she says lightly, but Remus thinks he can hear resignation underneath. “Go ask Sirius how many eggs he wants.”

Remus finds Sirius curled up as Padfoot, Harry propped up into a sitting position by Padfoot’s enormous ribcage. One pudgy hand is gripping a tiny handful of fur and, Remus is vengefully pleased to see, pulling rather hard on it. Remus sits down crossed legged in front of Harry and Padfoot finally lifts his head up from between his front paws.

 

Remus reaches out instinctively to scratch behind Padfoot’s ears and he leans into it.

 

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Remus says quietly to Padfoot.

 

Padfoot bumps his nose into Remus’ knee. A record starts playing from the kitchen and he can hear his mum humming and singing along, “beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy.” She loves John Lennon. She’s always played Lennon and derided McCartney and sang along to ‘whatever gets you through the night,” after full moons. For the first time since they’ve run away with Harry, wading through two months of mind-numbing fear and grief, Remus is viscerally struck by the thought that they not only have to keep Harry alive, have to keep him safe, have to get along, they have to make it good, Harry’s life has to be warm and full of comfort.

 

“I want to help, Sirius, I do. But I can’t hide out in the middle of nowhere for the next ten years. And we can’t… Harry needs people too. And a home.”

 

Harry has both fists tangled in Padfoot’s fur now and is waving them up and down.

 

“And... I can’t do this with you and… and be hooking up or whatever. We can’t be messing around and raising a child, that’s just… We can’t do that.”

 

Padfoot rests his head heavily on Remus’ knee and looks up at him. Remus brushes both hands over Padfoot’s head, smoothing down the hair he ruffled up with scratches, and with one last pat, gets up to gather Harry.

 

One little hand comes out right away, and one has to be gently disentangled from Padfoot’s fur. Harry comes away with a few long strands in a tight fist as Remus hefts him up into his arms.

 

“Come on Harry love, Auntie Hope is making eggs,” Harry makes a loud spitting sound. “That’s right, they’re delicious-- Come on Pads, my mum wants to know how many eggs you want; I’m gonna let you break the news you plan to eat us out of house and home.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please visit smelslikeart at their tumblr!  
> https://www.tumblr.com/search/smelslikeart


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please visit smelslikeart at their tumblr!  
> https://www.tumblr.com/search/smelslikeart

Remus refuses to go back to the cottage and Sirius refuses to stay much longer at Hope’s, convinced it’s not safe, so they manage to come to an agreement quickly.

 

Sirius is stubborn about not wanting a Secret Keeper until Remus, lying awake in the early hours of the morning, thinks of the perfect person. Remus finds Sirius also wide awake, sitting up in bed with Harry sprawled across his lap, and he, at least _,_ _is_ sleeping.

 

“We should ask Professor McGonagall.”

 

Sirius’ face lights up briefly and Remus watches him struggle to stuff his hope away. “She’d tell Dumbledore.”

 

“Maybe. But she might also do it, and then it wouldn’t matter if Dumbledore knew or not.”

 

“And if she doesn’t do it and Dumbledore knows?”

 

Remus frowns. He’s not used to this new cautious Sirius, this anxious and consequence-obsessed person. There was a time Sirius would go along with anything at the mere suggestion of “I don’t know, seems like a good idea.” Remus has never had to talk Sirius into anything and doesn’t know how to now.

 

Thankfully, Sirius still loves to solve a problem, still has a spark of the challenge and satisfaction of finding a way around a locked storeroom cupboard or Filch’s patrolling. “What if you just met with her? Say you want to get together for tea and feel it out.”

 

So Remus writes to Professor McGonagall that he wants to talk about re-entering university, that it’s time sensitive and he would really appreciate speaking to her soon.

 

And after pointing out that it’s more suspicious for the two of them disappear from wizarding society all together than occasionally go out in public, Remus takes the extra precaution of apparating to Diagon Alley to send the letter with a post-owl so their location can’t be tracked.

 

Diagon is still dark and it’s a bitterly cold winter morning. Remus shuffles around outside the Owl Post Office blowing on his ungloved hands until a young woman warily unlocks the door and hurries back behind the counter. Remus posts the letter as quickly as he can, wanting to get out of the dark shop and away from the nervous young woman.

 

Out on the street again, he walks up Diagon to Gringotts and then back down again. Some shops are still closed, no longer boarded up, but the window displays are empty or sporting dusty looking naked mannequins. Some shops have signs that say “Yes, we’re open!” or adverts for “Last Season Clearance!” sales. He feels a little comforted by it, evidence of everyone else slowly picking up the pieces as well. He thinks of everyone who graduated Hogwarts with him, everyone who graduated in the last eleven years; a whole generation of people who didn’t plan this far ahead.

 

Stacks of newspapers are bundled with twine and sitting on shop doorsteps. The _Prophet_ is still running jarring headlines about the Longbottom trial and ridiculously speculative op eds on Barty Crouch Sr. alongside insistently cheery articles with a staunch all-is-well slant that grates on Remus. There haven’t been any headlines about Harry Potter going missing, just the usual ones about an infant saving the world that have started to call him “The Boy Who Lived.”

 

Remus goes back to the Owl Post Office that afternoon to check for a reply, and again the next morning-- Minerva has asked to meet with him at a tea shop in Hogsmeade in just a few hours.

 

When Remus arrives-- on time-- Professor McGonagall is already there, sitting straight backed at a little table in the corner, two cups of tea and a small plateful of shortbread on the table. Remus feels a rush of relief at seeing her familiar tightly bound bun, the way she holds herself like she’s immovable; he thinks of the thousand times she caught them out at school and was _fair_ and _consistent_ , a small counterweight of justice in a sharply tilting world. Remus hasn’t been able to sleep, imagining this all going wrong and Harry being taken away. But weaving his way through the tables toward the rock that is Minerva McGonagall, Remus knows, he _knows_ she’ll help them with this. She will always take care of her students, even if they’ve given her hell for seven years, and even though Harry, with his still sometimes wobbly head, doesn’t yet know he’s her student.

 

“Professor,” Remus says, the deferential title coming naturally.

 

“Mr. Lupin,” she says in the same brisk tone as always, and Remus relaxes further into his seat, the opposite reaction of what he’d done back in school, but now Remus would very much like to go back to the days when Professor McGonagall decided his fate.

 

“I presume we’re here to discuss Harry Potter,” Professor McGonagall says low and quiet.

 

Remus straightens up abruptly, and then chides himself for being surprised. Of course she already knows, Dumbledore surely knows as well; that they ever thought they were pulling something off under their noses is laughable.

 

“What exactly do you and Mr. Black intend to do?”

 

“We’re keeping him,” Remus says, trying to sound firm. “We’re going to raise him.”

 

Professor McGonagall’s expression remains impassable. “Do you know a lot about raising children? Petunia Dursley has a baby the same age as Harry.”

 

Remus is well aware he knows nothing about raising children, but he feels embarrassed and indignant nonetheless. “Petunia Dursley might-- It doesn’t matter what she knows about babies. She knows nothing of Harry.”

 

“And you do?”

 

“I-- Sirius and I… It’s what James and Lily would have wanted. Sirius is his godfather.”

 

“I’m well aware; if you recall I was also at the Christening.”

 

Remus blushes.

 

This is the critical point of things, the Dursleys have a nice home and a yard and they have _jobs,_ Petunia presumably knows something about children, Remus actually _left_ two days ago, but-- “Professor, Sirius and I _love_ Harry. Surely that’s better than sticking him with some of the most intolerant and shallow people I’ve ever met. Petunia treated Lily like garbage and I have no reason to believe she wouldn’t do the same with Harry.”

 

Professor McGonagall takes a sip of her tea and then purses her lips into a thin line. “As it happens, I quite agree. I spent some time watching the Dursleys.” She pauses, politic. “I found them… unsuitable.”

 

Remus huffs a small laugh. Then he realizes what she’s said. “You went to go see them?”

 

“Yes. The day Albus arranged to have him brought there.”

 

Remus feels himself smiling wide; Professor McGonagall was watching out for Harry, watching out for him at time everyone else was setting off fireworks and getting drunk. He feels the urge to thank her and doesn’t question it. Professor McGonagall grants him a small but genuine smile in return.

 

“Now, what are we going to do about Harry?”

 

Remus leans forward a little and lowers his voice. “Sirius and I would be very grateful if you would act as our secret keeper.”

 

“I never thought I’d be aiding and abiding yours and Sirius Black’s mischief,” Professor McGonagall says drily, “but it’s for a good cause.”

 

Remus never thought he would be plotting and conspiring with Professor McGonagall, but here he is, and he’s beyond grateful to have this formidable woman on his side.

 

They agree it’s best to act quickly, and make arrangements to meet again at a park near his mum’s house in London that very evening. Remus apparates back to London to break the news that they have six or so hours to find a place to live.

 

Sirius actually “whoops” when Remus tells him Professor McGonagall has agreed to do it; he’s the most animated Remus has seen in a long time and not at all bothered by the seemingly impossible timeline of finding housing in London that day. He chatters about different neighborhoods as he dresses in warm clothes, an easy smile on his face Remus hasn’t seen in a while and desperately wants to touch the edges of it with his thumb. He takes a Muggle newspaper with him and slips out the door as Padfoot.

 

Remus stays home with Harry and makes cheese toasties for lunch while his mum looks on, trying her best to hide her concern about yet another meal of cheese toasties and eventually slipping some cooked carrots onto Harry’s plate. 

 

Sirius comes back only three hours later to say he’s found a place and already put up some protective enchantments. He’s rosy cheeked from the cold and Remus struggles to squash the images of Sirius’ sex flushed face in his mind. He’s looking so pleased about the flat Remus doesn’t question whatever slightly illegal methods he used to obtain it. He’d rather not know if secrecy statues were skirted or if unlocking spells were inappropriately used or if their landlord is currently feeling rather confused. He’s ready to be out of his mum’s place; the relief and comfort he felt has given way to feeling self-conscious and prickly about his mum seeing his substandard lunches for Harry and his obvious attraction to Sirius.

 

And Remus wants a place to live. He’d had to give up his flat after he dropped out of university and no longer received a stipend. He hadn’t particularly needed a London flat when he was sent out to wild forests. After a year of rough camping and two miserable months at the cottage, Remus is quietly aching to be home. He’s not suited for nomadic living; he’s suited for curling up on the couch with a blanket and book on a rainy day.

 

Sirius disillusions himself and flies over with Harry and Remus leaves to meet Professor McGonagall at the park, having agreed to send a Patronus to Sirius when they’re ready, so that Sirius can momentarily lower the anti-apparition wards. Remus wonders if this is what their lives will always be like; will they have to plan a three-step mission with lookouts and coordinated watches to drop Harry off at primary school? Can Remus go down the street to do the shopping? Presumably in a future effort to feed Harry more than cheese-- vegetables, maybe.

 

Professor McGonagall is at the park looking exactly like she ought to in a Muggle area, wearing a well-tailored skirt suit that, as Remus comes closer, is a subtle tartan.

 

“What job did I tell you I wanted during fifth year career counseling?”

 

Professor McGonagall gives him the same shrewd look now that she gave him then, when he’d gone into her office with a smart-ass answer and very little hope about his future. “Minister for Magic. And what did I say in return?”

 

“Something about not being able to recommend me to public administration with my detention record.”

 

“Let me remind you we also discussed your suitability for academia.”

 

“Yes Professor. I remember.”

 

Remus thinks of his old office at university (desk covered with books, a cup of tea ready) to send off his Patronus. He starts to feel inexplicably nervous as his silvery wolf disappears from sight. His hands are sweaty and shaking as he reaches out to apparate her to the flat and he has to lower his wand arm to hide it. Remus realizes this feels like the start of so many missions for the Order.

 

“It will be alright Remus,” Professor McGonagall says kindly and he looks up at his given name. “This is all just extra precaution, nothing is going to happen.”

 

Remus takes a shaky breath and apparates them right into the flat; they land in a little nook of an entry way and Remus bumps his head on a low slanted ceiling. He can hear Sirius recasting the anti-apparition ward before he calls out to come in. Professor McGonagall spares a moment to pat Remus’ hand encouragingly.

 

He nods to himself and swallows heavily and follows her into the flat. They appear to be on the top floor, if the pitched ceiling is anything to go by. The walls are covered in wallpaper with a pattern now indiscernible from age. There’s a row of large shuttered windows, the slats covered with a thick layer of dust. Sirius stands in the middle of the empty room with Harry, looking as jittery as Remus.

 

Professor McGonagall steps briskly forward, casting a brief smile at Harry who looks sideways at her before burying his face in Sirius’ shoulder. “I suggest we get the spell underway quickly, particularly since it seems there isn’t tea to offer anyway.”

 

Sirius’ smile is a little watery but he sounds relieved. “Of course Profesor. Thank you.”

 

“You are quite welcome,” she says. “I’ll need an address or home name.”

 

“The Attic on Fairview” Sirius says.

 

“And you have protective enchantments in place already?”

 

“As many as I know. Will that interfere?”

 

“Not as long as I know about them.”

 

Remus takes Harry to explore the flat while Sirius shows Mcgonagall which enchantments he cast where. The room they’re standing in is partitioned part way, with a U-shaped kitchen on the other side, roomy enough for a small kitchen table. Across from that, narrow stairs lead to the upper landing. There are two bedrooms nestled underneath sloping beamed ceilings and a bathroom that, while dusty like the rest of the flat, looks surprisingly clean otherwise.

 

“Which room do you want, Harry?” Remus asks, making an effort to bounce down the stairs and is rewarded with a little smile from Harry at the jostling.

 

Professor McGonagall is carefully tracing the outline of the door with her wand, walking around the edges of the room and then tracing the outline of every window. She completes the first level and goes up the left side of the narrow staircase, Sirius trailing after her, and a few minutes later, comes down the stairs on the right side, completing the loop. In the middle of the living room, she clasps Sirius and Remus’ forearms and whispers intently, “Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Harry Potter live at the Attic on Fairview.” As she finishes speaking the edges of the room and the places she outlined glow faintly purple and fade.

 

“Remember the order of the names,” she warns them.

 

“Yes m’am,” Sirius promises.

 

“And I wouldn’t recommend connecting this place to the Floo network; still quite a bit of weeding out to do at the Ministry.”

 

“Thank you Professor,” Sirius says, and then, hesitating, “Are you going to tell Dumbledore?”

 

“Professor Dumbledore,” she corrects. “I don’t make a habit of informing Albus of my every decision, it would be quite tedious. Besides which, I’m certain he already knows.” She fixes them with a hard stare-- “I hope, when the time comes, you’ll speak with him about Harry.”

 

“When the time comes?” Sirius says, building up into anger. “You mean when he comes to take him away?”

 

“Mr. Black, you’ll do well to remember that although quite brilliant you do not know everything.” McGonagall softens, and reaches out to touch Sirius gently on the shoulder. “Albus rarely makes decisions arbitrarily. We should all discuss the best protections for Harry, when things have calmed down. When we’ve given ourselves a chance to grieve.”

 

A lump forms in Remus throat and Sirius’ eyes get bright, he nods deferentially to Professor McGonagall. “Of course Professor,” he says in a hoarse voice. “Thank you for everything.”

 

“May I?” She says, holding her arms out for Harry.

 

Harry looks a little wary but lets Professor McGonagall hold him. She bends close and coos at him in full Scottish brogue. Remus isn’t sure what she’s saying, only catching a “wee” here and there. Sirius makes eye contact with him over McGonagall’s head to communicate delighted incredulity at what they’re witnessing. Harry, for his part, no longer looks wary, but is staring at McGonagall with wide happy eyes. It's a sweet moment, and Harry looks wondrous, but Remus thinks about what his mum said, and wonders if Harry should be cooing back.

 

Professor McGonagall kisses Harry’s forehead at the door and hands him back to Remus. She gives them a shrewd look. “For what it’s worth, I think you boys can do this, and, Mr. Lupin, I hope you continue your degree. Write to me if you really do need a letter of recommendation. I happen to know Elphias Doge regrets that you’re no longer in his department.”

 

Remus blushes and nods. “Thank you Professor.”

 

She leaves with a “Take care,” and a quiet snap of the door. Remus can hear the brisk click of her heels down the stairway.

 

He turns back, now alone with Sirius in a flat they’re moving into together, to see that Sirius is frowning a little. “You’re going back to school?”

 

“I don’t know, Sirius. I wrote that to McGonagall in case the letter was intercepted. I could hardly say we wanted her to help us hide Harry Potter please and thank you.”

 

“Were you going to tell me you wanted to go back?” Sirius asks.

 

“I don’t know. It’s not like I’ve decided yet.”

 

“But you could still tell me you’re thinking about it.”

 

Remus is picking up on some underlying issue but he’s not sure what it is. “Are you upset that I didn’t tell you that I’m not going back to school?”

 

Sirius rolls his eyes. “Nevermind.”

 

Remus looks at him steadily, “Is this..? I’m not keeping secrets from you. I’d appreciate it if you’d stop thinking I was.” Sirius looks away. “Come on,” Remus says, walking into the kitchen. “I think I saw some beer in the groceries my mom got us.”

 

Sirius huffs, sounding too much like Padfoot for Remus not to laugh a little. “I don’t see what’s funny,” Sirius says.

 

“There’s absolutely nothing funny. We’re in hiding, raising our dead best friend’s kid, who’s probably traumatized and what the hell do we know about it?”

 

Remus bounces Harry up a little higher on his hip and hands Sirius a beer.

 

Sirius rolls the bottle between his hands for a moment and then slowly cracks a smile. “I know a little bit about being traumatized.” It shouldn’t be funny but it is. “So do you, when it comes to it.”

 

Remus laughs despite himself and Sirius’ smile gets a little wider. Sirius flops down on the floor and tips his beer back after a quick toast to Remus. “Can you believe Minerva McGonagall just told us she thinks we’re capable of raising a child?”

 

Remus snorts. “Remember when she found us with that wild niffler?”

 

“I think she said no innocent creature deserved to live in our dormitory.”

 

“And Pete said he was innocent and she gave him detention for lying.”

 

It sinks in, what he’s just said, and he watches the realization steal over Sirius’ face as well. “Christ,” he says, and takes a long drink.

 

Remus can’t think of much else to say. He learned early on in life that some grief, some suffering can’t be put into words. Even though he knows he shouldn’t, if only to safeguard his own expectations, he waves his arm out to Sirius, “Come over here Pads.”

 

Sirius leaves his beer by the wall and crawls over to Remus. He looks so lost.

 

Remus puts an arm around his shoulders and pulls him in; Sirius’ warm heavy weight feels so good against his side. Harry attempts to crawl over Remus’ knee and Sirius pulls him up over it so Harry can sit on his lap; he immediately reaches for two fistfuls of Sirius’ hair, a recent favorite activity.

 

“I’m sorry,” Sirius whispers, voice rough. “M’sorry I didn’t trust you. None of this would’ve happened if I hadn’t--”

 

“It’s okay.”

 

Sirius shoves his shoulder into Remus. “No it fucking isn’t.”

 

“No. It isn’t.” Remus sighs. “There were times I wondered if it was you. Thought maybe-- for Regulus. Never Peter.”

 

“Peter.” Sirius leans his head into Remus and rests there. For long moments they’re both silent, Remus is sure they’re thinking the same thing: Peter, excited and a little gullible; how could seven years together in a dormitory creating a magical map, undertaking a dangerous transfiguration project together, romping around on full moons, birthdays and quidditch parties and propping each other up when they were stone cold drunk, how could all of that end up like this?

 

Harry abruptly breaks the moment when he starts determinedly practicing his spit bubbles and gets Sirius in the face. “Agh! Spit this way,” Sirius says, turning Harry around in his lap and wiping his face with a sleeve. They watch Harry make loud spitting sounds.

 

“Sirius. I want to go back to school.”

 

“You know I want you to go back. Or maybe you don’t.”

 

“I think we still know each other.”

 

“You don’t feel different?”

 

“I don’t feel much of anything.”

 

“I've felt afraid since that first night in the Fens,” Sirius says. “Took a while to figure it out; s’new feeling for me,” Sirius says with a self-deprecating smile.

 

“Weren’t you afraid when they went into hiding?”

 

“No. I thought, James and Lily-- never. I never thought--they were both so brilliant. I thought we’d all get out.”

 

“I thought it’d be me. I thought something had to happen to one of us and it would be me.”

 

“Christ Remus. How do you live like that?”

 

Remus shrugs the shoulder Sirius isn’t leaning against and gives his own self-deprecating smile. “Someone’s got to expect the worst.”

 

Sirius laughs and then yelps-- Harry’s reached around to tug sharply on his hair. He works Harry’s fingers gingerly out of his hair and sets him on Remus’ lap. Remus stretches to set his beer down far outside of Harry’s reach.

 

“Don’t leave,” Sirius blurts out.

 

Remus stares down at Harry’s unruly hair, sticking up every which way just like James’. He can’t tell Sirius that this in-between-situation with them is unsustainable, that he though Remus has attempted to clarify the boundaries of their relationship with a rule against shagging, he’s still helpless to the pull Sirius has over him. “I won’t leave.”

 

Sirius leans back into Remus and they sit talking for a long time. Harry falls asleep on Remus and he’s trying not to laugh too hard talking about James and Lily and Hogwarts and even some good things after Hogwarts. James and Lily’s flat warming party when Lily supplied everyone with Muggle ping pong ball guns and the curdled mac and cheese they’d once eaten to spare Pete’s feelings and then teased him about anyway. 

Around one in the morning they realize there are no beds. No mattress or couch or anything for Harry. Sirius transforms into Padfoot and curls around a pile of their jackets and jumpers and they nestle Harry in there. He face screws up as Remus sets him down like he’s about to wake up and cry, but he shifts in his sleep toward Padfoot’s soft fur and settles down again. Miraculously, Sirius falls asleep not long after.

 

Remus pillows his head on his folded up trousers and stares up at the high ceiling of their new flat, unable to hold back the thoughts about how horrible he was to leave, how unprepared he is for this, circling through his head now that the whirlwind of activity is over.  

 

He gets up and quietly slips out the door, tiptoeing down three flights of stairs, apparating from the alleyway nearby to the cottage in the Fens. He gathers their clothes and pillows and blankets and pots and pans and the kettle and apparates back and forth several times, carrying large bundles. He even hauls up the worn floral mattress, manages to apparate without splinching himself, and levitates it up the stairs. Remus takes the Tiffany lamps even though Sirius will probably tease him for it, and, standing in the doorway of a much emptier cottage, shivering in the cold without his coat, he goes back for the Halloween pants too.

 

The doiles stay behind, and the drafty windows, and the melancholic feeling that comes with isolation that maybe in better days Remus would have particularly enjoyed.

 

Padfoot and Harry sleep soundly through it all and when he’s done, he grabs a pillow and settles down on the floor near them and falls asleep to the sounds of little whistling breaths and great dog huffs. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please visit smelslikeart at their tumblr!  
> https://www.tumblr.com/search/smelslikeart


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please visit smelslikeart at their tumblr!  
> https://www.tumblr.com/search/smelslikeart

A few days later Remus gets an owl from from Dr. Elphias Doge, the Director of Magical Studies at King’s College  and Remus’ former Advanced Theory of Charms professor. Dr. Doge takes the time to write Remus some pleasantries (he’s just had lunch with Professor McGonagall) before offering him a place in the department again. He writes that they’re all picking up the pieces after the war, and he’s lost more students than he’s kept, and please not to be one of the former. He tells him he could start as soon as winter term, please let him know at his earliest convenience.

 

Remus refolds the letter carefully and sets it on the kitchen table, far out of Harry’s reach, though that doesn’t stop him from trying anyway. Sirius is at the stove, heating up beans for toast and, per Hope’s subtle recommendation, cooked carrots.

 

“What’s that?” he asks.

 

“A letter from Dr. Doge. He says I could go back this term.”

 

“You should go,” Sirius says simply, and turns away to chop the carrots.

 

Sirius’ uncharacteristic quiet has Remus on his back foot. “Ok. I’ll write back that I accept?”

 

“Yeah,” he says, still chopping.

 

Remus is eager to the escape the weird atmosphere in the kitchen and makes excuses to write back right away. He spends the rest of the day unpacking his old school trunk and unshrinking all his textbooks and organizing notes that were haphazardly packed away in a hurry.

 

Remus’ cupboard of an office is just the same, but he no longer shares it with Amelia Bones, a hardass of a scholar a couple years ahead of him at Hogwarts who studied ancient Celtic judiciary systems. Instead, Marlene McKinnon has moved from down the hall. She’s also returning from a leave of absence, but only one semester. Remus hadn’t made much time at Hogwarts to get to know her even though they shared a friend in Lily. He’d been so wrapped up in the Marauders, and she was in Ravenclaw and Lily was rather extraordinary in her efforts to maintain friendships across house lines; most people didn’t bother.

 

Remus quickly settles back into his university life. He checks out fifteen books from the library and piles them up on his desk, and he gets a stack of a parchment and a new quill. He meets with his advisors and attends his classes, and spends his breaks hunched over plain covered books with enigmatic titles and takes notes, copious notes. He refreshes himself on Wizarding Research Standard style again, and keeps track of page numbers and bibliographic information and Marlene teaches him a spell to retrieve those labels, like _accio_ for note taking. He walks to campus in the morning with his bag heavy with books and his head heavy with information. He walks home in the dark, preoccupied and planning; he reads at the kitchen table and spreads his books out all over it.

 

Sometimes, coming up the three flights of stairs to their flat, in the moments before he opens the door, he wonders how Sirius has spent the day while Remus does everything he wants to do in the library and his office and brings home more to work on, and whether Sirius wants to be doing it, whether he loves it like Remus loves university, but doesn’t ask. He doesn’t ask what Sirius does all day because he doesn’t really want to confront all the things he’s not helping with.

 

At the end of his first week back Remus comes home to find Sirius sitting in Harry’s bedroom looking despondent. His eyes are red rimmed and he’s slumped on the floor with Harry who is surrounded by stuffed animals.

 

“Hello Harry,” Remus says, lifting Harry up into the air over his head and then swooping down to join Sirius on the floor. Harry gives him a big smile and claps his hands on Remus’ cheeks. “Did you have a good day? Play with lots of stuffies?” Harry gurgles. “What’s that Harry? Sirius looks miserable? Yes he can be very intense.”

 

Sirius gives a weak smile. “Shut up.”

 

“What’s going on?” Remus asks.

 

He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “It’s Lohri.”

 

“I don’t know what that is.”

 

“The Potters-- Mrs. Potter used to celebrate Lohri.”

 

“I didn’t know.”

 

“I didn't know either until I lived with them. I guess it’s usually before Hogwarts’ term starts.”

 

Remus knocks one foot gently into Sirius’ shin. “What’d they do?”

 

Sirius shrugs, looking down at his hands in his lap. “They’d have a bunch of people over, they had tons of friends. And Mrs. Potter would cook a lot. There was a big bonfire. Popcorn.”

 

“Sounds nice,” Remus says. It looks like there’s more Sirius wants to say so Remus waits.

 

When Sirius finally speaks his voice cracks. “Do you think James celebrated with Harry?”

 

“I don’t know, Pads,” Remus says gently. “We could celebrate it with him.”

 

“No we can’t. I don’t know how.”

 

“We’ll light a fire, have some popcorn--”

 

“No it was more than that. She used to sing all these songs, just quietly while she was cooking. And there was a bunch of Punjabi food I don’t know the names of and--” Sirius has been building in volume, until-- “There’s just so much Harry’s missing out on,” he says quietly and it breaks Remus’ heart a little. “There’s so much James and Lily would have done. They loved him _so much_.” He’s crying and Remus feels helpless; helpless to make Sirius feel better, helpless to give Harry everything his parents would have given him, helpless against how unfair it is that they’re not here.

 

“Will he ever know how brilliant they were?”

 

“Oh Pads. I don’t know.” Remus shifts Harry so he can reach out with one hand to hold Sirius’ ankle. He smooths his thumb over the round bone there and thinks about what his mum said. “We just have to try. Do our best to tell him.”

 

Sirius shakes his head, like it’s not enough, and it isn’t. There’s nothing they can do that would be enough, but-- “Hey,” Remus says and waits until Sirius looks up at him. “What would Petunia Dursley do?”

 

“What would she do?” Sirius asks confused.

 

“No I mean, do you think Petunia would celebrate Lohri with Harry?”

 

Sirius is trying not to smile, like he can’t believe Remus right now.

 

“No I’m serious! Look-- We will never be as good as James and Lily, but we will never be as bad as Petunia Dursley.”

 

Sirius barks out a laugh. “Merlin, Remus-- you’re horrible.”

 

“But not as horrible as she is.”

 

Sirius is shaking his head again, but this time in amusement at Remus’ cheek.

 

“Should I go get some popcorn?” Remus asks.

 

“No it’s ok. I think popcorn is a choking hazard anyway. Maybe next year.”

 

“How do you know popcorn is a choking hazard?”

 

“Been talking to your mum about what to feed him. I’m getting sick of cheese toasties and beans on toast and eggs with toast. No more toast.”

 

“Sounds like you’re doing a pretty good job.”

 

“Well nobody’s choked yet.”

 

Remus laughs and Sirius stands. “Should probably start making dinner.”

 

“What are we gonna have if not toast?” Remus asks, pretending he’s alarmed.

 

“Soup!” Sirius shouts going down the stairs.

 

They eat soup for the next two weeks, but it’s not so bad.

 

A routine quietly establishes itself, if the barely controlled chaos they’re maintaining qualifies as a routine.

 

Remus thinks back to the crunch of activity and stress before OWLs and NEWTs, and realizes with daily renewed awe that taking care of a child is on an entirely different level. When he comes home from university he and Sirius have a conversation that goes something like: what do we have to get done before tomorrow just to make it through the next day? And Remus says how much reading he’s got to do, and Sirius says if he doesn’t do the wash everyone will be out of clean socks, or that they’re out of milk, or clean bottles, or he’s had to use an old cloak to dry Harry off after a bath because he didn’t realize they were out of clean towels and could Remus go down to the corner to get some hobnobs because Sirius needs them to get through the night. And they go back and forth over dinner, trying to figure out who can get what done and what they’re forgetting while Harry gets a lot of mashed peas in his hair and very little in his mouth.

 

Sometimes he wakes up in the morning to find that all the shutters have been cleaned and opened, revealing that the flat is surprisingly sunlit and lovely and that Sirius’ eyes are quite bloodshot. Sometimes, waking up in the middle of the night to soothe Harry, Remus will see Sirius scouring the bathroom or _scourgifying_ a couch he’s somehow procured, or ripping sheets of wallpaper down. And when these projects aren’t being tended to, Sirius is usually curled up as Padfoot next to Harry.

 

Remus doesn’t know what to do with these worries. Daily (and nightly) he is confronted with an imprecise role; he knew it wasn’t really enough to say ‘no fucking’, to outline the boundary of what is restricted and hope that what is not restricted is somehow illuminated. Remus can feel himself landsliding into domesticity, the rubble of his resolve tumbling down with him. Remus will never be immune to Sirius and the subtle rumbling he causes under Remus’ skin, but he’ll certainly never quiet it seeing Sirius every day.

 

Sometimes he loses. He gives in to the tugging. Sometimes, Remus comes home early in the afternoon, having decided to try his luck at grading papers at the kitchen table instead of his office because he finds himself missing Sirius and Harry all day.

 

He arrives late to his Tuesday morning lecture because he had been standing in the kitchen and watching Sirius and Harry on the living room floor until he’d realized with a jolt that he should have left ten minutes ago. Harry had been loudly voicing his extreme displeasure as soon as Sirius started unsnapping his footie pajamas-- he hated being changed-- and Sirius had stopped to hold both his little hands-- “I know little guy, I’d like to stay in my pajamas all day too”-- and continued unsnapping through Harry’s loud wails, gently guiding his little arms out of snug sleeves, and tugging the little feet loose-- Harry stopped crying as soon as the pajamas were off, watching Sirius play peek-a-boo with them rather warily until Sirius wore him down and he smiled--a smile that lasted only until Sirius started to tug a little jumper over Harry’s head and he began wailing again.

 

Sirius had looked up at Remus then, hair tousled and shirt covered in spit up from breakfast, Harry crying in his lap with only one arm in a sleeve and the rest bunched up around his neck, and said with unmistakable fondness, “D’you think it’ll ever take less than fifteen minutes to dress him?” and Remus said, “I don’t know Pads, I remember James taking a long time every morning to put on his tie and then mess up it just right.” And Sirius had laughed and started working on coaxing Harry’s other arm into the jumper sleeve.

 

All day the image follows Remus around. The way Sirius’ hair had fallen past his ears when he leaned over to sympathize with Harry; Harry’s mistrustful expression giving way to tentative joy, the laughable absurdity of how much he hates having his clothes changed. Of the all the things Remus had found sexy about Sirius over the years, he never anticipated seeing Sirius covered in spit-up being one of them. But there’s an indescribable swell he feels while watching Sirius love Harry.

 

The living room is scattered with blocks and picture books but Sirius and Harry are nowhere to be seen. Remus dumps his bag and his books at the kitchen table and goes to check Harry’s room, in the hallway he can hear the water running in the bathroom. It’s not Harry’s usual bath time but maybe he’s had some sort of explosive mess and Remus thinks he’d rather find out after Harry’s been washed clean.

 

He’s graded two papers and Sirius and Harry still haven’t come out of the bathroom and Remus tries to tell himself not to worry because what could possibly go wrong in the bathroom except slipping and bashing your head on the tub or swallowing all the shampoo or accidentally drowning or-- Remus gets up to check.

 

Remus knocks on the door as he opens it a crack.

 

“Remus! Merlin, fuck am I glad you’re home.”

 

Harry is sitting in the tub happily splashing a rubber dragon toy in two inches of water and squeals when he sees Remus. Sirius, however, looks to be in something of a crisis. He’s leaning over the tub with a comb and a look of agony as he tries to remove large globs of pink goo from his hair.

 

“Is that the--?”

 

“Yes,” Sirius says with a particularly strong wince as several of the combs’ teeth break off and lodge in the goo. “Help me,” he whimpers pathetically.

 

Remus sits down on the toilet lid. “Did you try washing it out?”

 

“What do you think I’ve been doing in here? It doesn’t work! It’s waterproof. Harry has never been cleaner though.”

 

Remus laughs. “How’d it get stuck in there in the first place?”

 

“Harry stuck it in there, obviously.”

 

“I’ve seen you covered in too many unknown substances to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

 

“Help me Moony,” Sirius whines.

 

“Come here.”

 

Sirius scoots away from the tub to sit on the floor in front of Remus and hands the comb back to him.

 

Most of the goo is on the ends of Sirius’ hair, closest to his face, and Remus can just imagine Harry grabbing on to it with both fists. But when Remus looks closer, the goo is oozing slightly, just slightly, slower than a snail, and migrating up the strands toward Sirius’ scalp. Remus keeps this information to himself and also resolves not to buy any more magic playdough. Harry can play with Muggle playdough; they have enough to worry about without playdough gaining sentience and trying to eat Sirius’ hair.

 

Sirius leans his body against Remus’ legs while Remus tries to pull the goo free with his fingers. It’s slippery and Remus doesn’t get far. He combs his fingers through the un-gooed hair at Sirius’ nape while he tries to think and ends up imagining how Sirius would feel if Remus told him they’d have to cut it out. Sirius likes his hair, but not in a way that takes up a lot of his attention. Remus would miss it the most-- he thinks ruefully that he ought to get the shears and remove just one source of temptation.

 

Instead Remus finds himself absentmindedly scratching circles around Sirius’ scalp and quickly panics about stopping or not stopping.

 

He’s saved by Harry-- “Harry nooo, don’t suck on the facet buddy,” Sirius says, leaning closer to the tub where Harry has his entire mouth around the crusted white edges of the spout. “What is it about the facet? Huh? Every time.” Sirius picks Harry up out of the tub and wraps him in a towel before sitting back down against Remus’ legs, Harry bundled up in Sirius’ lap.

 

Remus realizes the most obvious solution-- honestly, why didn’t he think of it before, bloody bewitched by Sirius’ damn hair-- and digs his wand out of his pocket and promptly vanishes the pink goo.

 

Sirius looks over his shoulder beaming. “Moony, you’re a genius!”

 

“Sure Pads.”

 

Sirius turns back around and says more quietly, “Would you mind combing the knots out? …It’s just, I think Harry might fall asleep.”

 

“All right,” Remus says, just as quietly.

 

Harry is yawning within his towel bundle and rubbing his eyes with loose fists. Everything feels very still as Remus starts to run the comb through the very ends of Sirius’ hair, working his way slowly up. He takes a ridiculous amount of care, holding his hair gently in his hands so Sirius doesn’t feel the tug on his scalp, slowly working the comb through the knots, running through the unknotted hair several times. He’s burning with embarrassment at the obviously unnecessary handling, but Sirius has leaned himself heavily against Remus legs and he can’t stop. 

It’s always Sirius’ hair that tugs the hardest on Remus’ resolve. Sometimes, seeing Sirius tuck it behind his ears or come out of the bathroom with the ends dripping, Remus’ fingers actually twitch. The last time Remus had seen Sirius during the war his hair was only just long enough to tuck behind his ears and starting to curl a bit at the ends. Remus can hardly keep track of how long ago that was, but it must have been a while because now his hair is brushing his shoulders. It smells the same though.

 

Remus abandons the comb and runs his fingers through it, catching that almost toasted smell every once in a while as he parts the strands. He smooths the little flyaway hairs at Sirius’ temples, and then works on the ones by his ear, smoothing, pressing them gently behind his ear. He scratches his fingers into the thickest part, right above Sirius’ neck and pulls his fingers through, soft strands tickling the skin between his fingers. He does it again and again and again.

 

Sirius doesn’t move to get up, doesn’t turn around either, just says quietly, “Maybe it’s time to cut it.”

 

Remus’ hands shake as he reaches for Sirius’ hair again, pulling as much as he can into a ponytail. “Don’t do that.” He drops the hair and it fans out over Sirius’ shoulders. “It looks good.”

 

“All right.”

 

Remus grips his knees tightly with both hands to stop them reaching for Sirius. “All right,” he whispers, “I have some papers to grade.”

 

Sirius turns to look back at Remus, stares up into his face for entirely too long, before sighing. “I guess I’ll put Harry down for his nap.”

 

He carefully shifts a sleeping Harry to one arm and pushes up from the ground with one hand on Remus’ knee, his hand on top of Remus’ for just a moment, and leaves Remus in the bathroom trying to calm his hands. Remus feels like the rumbling he’d always managed to hold inside of himself has traveled out to his hands, to his fingertips, their shaking a visible, external sign of just how deeply Remus loves Sirius. Remus doesn’t know how to draw that shifting and heaving back into himself.

 

* * *

 

January’s full moon sneaks up on Remus. He didn’t think it was possible not to spend at least three days dreading the transformation but he’s busier than he’s ever been. Before Remus knows it, in addition to the usual after school questions about clean pants and if there’s any leftover mash, there are questions about when Remus will leave for the cottage, what time he’ll get back, apologies about the impossibility of Padfoot accompanying him this time, the last few times, but they don’t know what to do with Harry. Neither of them are quite ready to leave him with Remus’ mum.

 

So he does the next best thing and furtively, embarrassingly, brings a pair of socks that smell strongly of Padfoot and spends the entire night gnawing on them. It’s not as good as Padfoot, but it’s better than nothing, and Remus comes through the moon with bone deep exhaustion and a sharp pain in his knee, but not much else.

 

He limps down the corridor to his office looking forward to a chair and some afternoon quiet. He has some reading to catch up on after the transformation and plans to spend the afternoon quietly ignoring the pain in his knee in favor of immersing himself in Charms theory. When he opens his office door he almost falls over and has to clutch at the door as he sways, bag banging painfully into the side his knee hurts and throwing him off further.

 

Albus Dumbledore is sitting in the slim plastic chair intended for first year students during office hours and therefore rarely used. He’s wearing emerald robes with smattered clusters of gold stars and he looks very out of place in Remus’ gray office.

 

“I’m sorry to have startled you, Mr. Lupin,” Dumbledore says, in his pleasant way that leaves Remus off footed nonetheless.

 

Remus tries his best to hide the limp as he crosses the small space to his chair. “It’s alright Professor.” He feels thrown off, being the one behind the desk; trust Albus Dumbledore to make someone feel diminutive and befuddled in their own office.

 

Dumbledore reaches forward to tilt a book spine toward him, “ _Anomalies in Defensive Spellwork_ \-- A fascinating read. Quite to your liking I suspect.”

 

“Yes, it’s been interesting,” Remus answers slowly, certain Dumbledore isn’t here to discuss his coursework and unsure about how much to play along.

 

“I also suspect you know why I’m here.” Dumbledore looks older than Remus remembers. Or maybe it’s that he looks his age, whereas before he always seemed too energetic to really be an old man.

 

Remus doesn’t want to lie to Dumbledore, can’t lie to Dumbledore. Sometimes, camped out in damp heather and hungry, Remus would consider what Dumbledore had asked him to do, would think about all the ways he and his nineteen-year-old friends were putting their lives at risk, trusting his instruction, and feel enraged. And there were times, walking down the stacks, surrounded by tomes and astonished by the sheer number of topics to be picked apart and examined, that Remus remembers Albus Dumbledore gave him an education and he knows he’ll always love and look up to him. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move, his body tense in his chair.

 

Dumbledore doesn’t look relaxed either, so much as weary. “I won’t keep you from your studies for very long. I’m here to ask after Harry Potter.”

 

Remus still can’t quite speak, he opens his mouth and closes it again.

 

“Is he well?” Dumbledore asks politely.

 

“About as well as could be expected I guess.”

 

“What should we expect after something completely unexpected happens?”

 

Remus feels a little annoyed; completely unexpected magical phenomena or not, Harry is still a child. “He seems healthy, if that’s what you’re asking.”

 

“I’m asking how he is,” Dumbledore corrects.

 

Remus sighs and gives in, rubbing his sore knee. “He doesn’t sleep very well and he still doesn't talk much,” Remus admits quietly, “We think he can walk but it’s hard to get him to try because he wants to be held all the time.” Listed out like that, Remus feels like he’s betrayed Harry somehow. “But he’s crying a lot less than he used to, smiles so much more. And he loves mash and bath time and Sirius just taught him to clap whenever a song finishes.”

 

“I’m happy to hear that.” A small smile makes an appearance on Dumbledore’s face and he stands abruptly, hands clasped. “There are some circumstances regarding Harry’s safety that we need to discuss.”

 

Remus swallows. In his head he’s pleading _please don’t take him away_ , but he doesn’t want to say this out loud for fear of accusing Dumbledore of wanting to take him away. He feels the weight of walking a fine line here, between respecting Dumbledore and the information he inevitably seems to have, and not doing what he suggests. Ignoring that for whatever reason he thought it best to bring Harry to Petunia’s doorstep and Sirius and Remus unequivocally deciding that solution is unacceptable. They would have been devastated to give him up on November 1st, but they’ve had Harry for three months now and there’s no going back. They love him so much; Remus has overhauled whole mental landscapes to love him.

 

“Sir?” Remus asks, voice hoarse.

 

“I’d like the three of you to come see me in July.”

 

Remus nods before he really processes what Dumbledore’s said. Is Dumbledore giving them until July with Harry and then it’s back off to Petunia’s? His deference snaps.

 

“Sirius and I are not going to give up Harry,” he says quietly but firmly.

 

Dumbledore’s eyes look impossibly sad. “No, I can’t ask that of you now. But there are some conditions that need to be met to ensure Harry’s safety.”

 

Remus nods slowly. “I’ll work on Sirius, but I can’t promise he’ll be there or bring Harry.”

Dumbledore nods like he knew this might be the case, like he knew Remus was the weakest link here, and Remus feels that near dormant rage flare up again. At the door, Dumbledore says, “Take care of yourselves, keep in touch.”

 

Remus forces himself to stay on campus all day and well into the night, not getting much done at all, between the exhaustion and the pain in his knee and the conversation with Dumbledore buzzing around in his head. When he finally leaves his office it’s so dark he has to forego the usual walk home and decides to apparate.  Standing outside the door to their flat Remus wonders how he’s going to tell Sirius he saw Albus Dumbledore today. That their teacher and leader and maybe sometimes their friend, who now feels much more like an unknown threat to their life with Harry, visited him today. He pushes the door open without any answers.

 

The flat is dark, not even the kitchen light on, and Remus sets his bag down gently and takes his shoes off at the door to walk quietly through the flat. Remus opens the door to Harry’s nursery just and crack, and sees Harry sleeping in his crib, one hand stretched above his head and the other thrown over his stuffed wolf.

 

Sirius is curled up next to the crib, sleeping as Padfoot on the hard floor. He lifts his head slowly and watches Remus in the doorway for a moment before quietly padding over and out into the hallway to transform. Remus shuts the door to Harry’s room as quietly as he can and motions silently for Sirius to follow him to the kitchen.

 

“I’ve never seen him sleep like that.” Remus says in awe, getting out a saucepan to heat milk for hot cocoa.

 

“I’ve been laying him down to nap in his crib,” Sirius says, voice hoarse from sleep. He collapses into a kitchen chair and rubs his eyes. Even dead tired he looks good to Remus.

 

“He doesn’t cry?” Remus asks.

 

“Screams for at least 45 minutes.” Sirius drags his hand down his face and sighs. “Your mum told me to put him down and rub his back and wait it out.”

 

“Oh,” Remus says, unable to voice anything else amid the jostle of thoughts like, did she really? and when did you talk to my mum? and I can’t believe you got him to sleep in his bed again? and why didn’t I know? “Do you want some hot cocoa?” he asks instead.

 

“M’not hungry. I can only feel tired anymore.”

 

Remus sniffs at the dramatics and Sirius glances sideways at him. “I’m serious,” he says. “I’ll probably feel nothing but tired for the next ten years; everything else is gone. Not hungry, not thirsty, not even randy. Just tired.” Sirius rants, leaning into it.

 

“Mm hmm,” Remus says, sitting down with his mug at the table and looking at Sirius over the rim of it.

 

“Give me a sip,” Sirius says, reaching out for the mug and Remus hands it over, knowing this is exactly how this would go.

 

“Dumbledore was in my office today.”

 

Sirius chokes on his sip of cocoa. “Fuck! What do we--”

 

Remus interrupts and says calmly, “He knows you and I have Harry. And he made it sound like he knows some things we don’t know. He wants to meet with us.”

 

“I’m not going to meet with him so that he can politely take Harry away.”

 

“I don’t think he’s going to take him,” Remus says evenly. “At least he said he wasn’t going to.”

 

“If he’d wanted us to have him he would have brought him to us in the first place.”

 

“Sure, but that doesn’t mean he’s trying to take him away now.”

 

“You always trust him so blindly,” Sirius says, leaning forward in his seat now. “Always do exactly what he says.”

 

“Yeah Sirius,” Remus says with an edge of sarcasm, “Because maybe I think the founder of the Wizengamot and the leader of the resistance effort knows a little more than a couple of twenty year olds.”

 

“He’s not always right! All those secrets during the war-- for what? Maybe if we’d all shared a little more information we would’ve figured out who the spy was, instead of everyone suspecting everyone else.”

 

Remus sits quietly for a moment in his chair, absorbing all the implications of Sirius’ anger, his tired body and tired eyes. Finally he says in an even voice, “I don’t think it was anyone’s fault. Not yours or mine or Albus’. I think we should get some sleep before we talk about this anymore.”

 

Sirius crosses his arms petulantly over his chest.

 

Remus ignores it and tugs on Sirius’ elbow until he gets up from the table. “Come on. Let’s just get some sleep,” he says, guiding Sirius down the hallway to the bedroom with the mattress from the cottage. “You should take the bed tonight. You look like death warmed over.”

 

Sirius scoffs, “As if you look any better off. I’m not kicking you out of bed the night after a full moon. I can see the limp.”

 

“Well I’m not giving in.”

 

Sirius stands in the doorway watching Remus amble over to the closet. Remus tugs off his sweater and throws it onto a shelf already overflowing with knitwear, and turns around.

 

“Sirius…” Remus starts, hesitating. “You’re exhausted. Just get in the bed.”

 

Sirius looks down at his feet. “What about you?”

 

Remus turns back around so he doesn’t have to face Sirius while he says this. “It’s big enough for both of us.”

 

Remus can feel Sirius lingering in the doorway while he pulls his tee shirt over his head and throws it on top of a very large pile of clothes on the floor in the closet.

 

Sirius meets his eyes when he turns back around, expression unreadable. Remus brushes past him in the doorway rather than dealing with deciphering it, and goes down the hall to brush his teeth.

 

He feels like he’s in a freefall even though he knows suggesting they share the bed is not entirely motivated by his attraction to Sirius. Sirius can’t keep sleeping on the floor in Harry’s room; Remus is certain he’s doing it out of fear for Harry’s safety, a heightened state of anxiety that Sirius can’t live out twenty four hours a day. Remus is no expert on healthy emotional coping mechanisms, but he’s pretty sure constantly guarding Harry isn’t one of them.

 

When he gets back to the room Sirius is laying on his back, legs out straight. He’s remembered that Remus prefers the inside, often wakes up wedged in between the mattress and the wall. Remus crawls into bed from the foot of it, rather than climb over Sirius and slides under the covers.

 

They lay side by side in the dark, Sirius’ presence beside him palpable. Remus looks up at the sharply slanting ceiling and tries not to think about how easy it used to be to slip into bed with Sirius. A circumstance not even decided upon, just brought about with body language Remus used to know. A couple of drinks and a light touch to the small of Sirius’ back and an hour later they’d be tangled up and coming down.

 

Sirius shifts in bed to face him.

 

“How was last night?”

 

“Fine, just twisted my knee a bit transforming back.” Remus likes the way Sirius wants to know but never harps on it. Sirius just hmms and lies next to him.

 

Remus turns on his side to face Sirius too, feeling a pang at seeing Sirius resting his head on his pillow, such an intimate view. “When did you talk to my mum?”

 

“Sometimes Harry and I go over for lunch.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“I like your mum,” Sirius says. “She taught me how to make that soup.”

 

Sirius has been going over to his mum’s place to learn to cook. “Do you like staying home with Harry?” Remus finally asks.

 

Sirius pauses to think for a moment. “I think I do, yea. At first everything was horrible. And I get kind of lonely-- that’s why I go see your mum.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Remus says, and he really means it.

 

“No it’s alright. I didn’t have anything lined up after Hogwarts or the Order like you and James. I just thought it’d be ace to wear jeans and not sit at desk all day.” Sirius pauses, “I don’t think I would’ve pictured taking care of a kid, you know? But I like it. We do our own thing everyday-- sometimes that’s screaming for two hours, but--” Sirius shrugs one shoulder and smiles.

 

Remus smiles back at him in the dark. He wouldn’t have pictured childcare for Sirius either, but it makes sense-- a match for Sirius’ boundless energy, a job without an authority to answer to, and underneath the energy and the rebelliousness, Sirius is really rather devoted to the people he loves.

 

“And now you go have lunch with my mum?”

 

“Your mum is really nice.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Do you?”

 

“Do you have a crush on my mum?” Remus jokes.

 

Sirius reaches out to shove Remus in the shoulder. “Can’t even say something nice about your mum.”

 

“Well then what the fuck do you mean do I know my mum is nice?”

 

Sirius pauses, eyes roving around Remus’ face. “Did you know she knows about us?”

 

Remus gets very still. “What about us.”

 

Sirius rolls his eyes, but his voice is gentle. “She saw us snogging once, I guess around seventh year.”

 

Remus covers his face with both hands and groans.

 

“It’s not that bad Moony. She really loves you.”

 

Remus peeks through his fingers at Sirius.

 

“You should-- She really loves you.” Sirius stares at Remus for another long moment and then rolls over to his other side, facing away from Remus. A little while later, he says quietly, “She really loves me too.”

 

Remus lays awake. Years of agonizing about not telling his mum, about acting _just so_ around Sirius, and she’s known all along and never said anything, never acted any differently. Remus feels on display thinking back through countless times Remus thought he was hiding but was actually in plain view, it’s excruciatingly embarrassing.

 

But when he really thinks about it-- this is the kind in-between he fantasizes about, a knowledge unacknowledged, understood but unsaid. Remus didn’t have to unearth his insides and offer it up in conversation, didn’t have to dredge up the tenderest parts of himself and push and shove them into one word. He doesn’t have to turn the envelope of himself inside out and let his tender corners get dented out of shape by the world, but the contents of that envelope are still known.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please visit smelslikeart at their tumblr!  
> https://www.tumblr.com/search/smelslikeart


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please visit smelslikeart at their tumblr!  
> https://www.tumblr.com/search/smelslikeart

Remus gets home late the next evening, having gone to see a visiting lecturer (which he had already been considering attending but was further persuaded by the thought of delaying confronting Sirius who slept in his bed last night, Sirius who his mum really loves).

 

He’s greeted at the door with loud, screaming cries the likes of which Remus hasn’t heard in a while. He runs up the stairs to find Sirius bouncing and swaying Harry in his arms with a wild look in his eyes.

 

“He’s been like this all afternoon.”

 

“Did you try a bath?” Remus has to speak loudly over Harry’s screams to be heard.

 

“What do you think I’ve been doing all day? I’ve tried everything.” Sirius yells back.

 

“Sorry! Sorry! Here let me take him for a while, take a break.”

 

Remus takes Harry and looks down into his screwed up face; he’s red and broken out into a sweat from crying so hard and is screaming with every out-breath. Remus can see why Sirius looks so worried, it hasn’t been this bad since that first awful month.

 

“Can we floo your mum? I don’t know what’s wrong.”

 

“She’s at work.”

 

“This is an emergency!”

 

“It’ll be ok.” But Remus can’t access his usual calm and it doesn’t sound very convincing at all.

 

“What if after everything he’s gotten spattergroit and dies?”

 

“Don’t you get spots with spattergroit?”

 

“I don’t know!”

 

“Floo Andromeda! Ask her if spattergroit is spotty.”

 

“All right. Floo Andromeda. Wait! No-- we’re not connected to the floo.”

 

“Christ. Can you go get her? Apparate her here?”

 

“But we decided--”

 

“We decided that because my mum is muggle. Andromeda survived the Blacks. She can hold her own.”

 

“Good point.”

 

Sirius runs down the stairs and Remus hears the door slam even over Harry’s crying. Alone with Harry’s ceaseless crying it’s even harder not to give in to full-blown panic. He’ll be fine.

 

“You’ll be fine Harry. Everything will be ok. It’ll be ok Harry,” Remus repeats a constant stream of reassurances like a litany until he hears the front door and a yell from Sirius.

 

Sirius runs up the stairs and Andromeda follows at a more sedate pace, tall and imposing and looking not at all worried-- in fact, a little amused.

 

“Nice to see you again Remus,” she says, always presenting impeccable manners.

 

She steps forward and smoothes her hand over Harry’s forehead, pushing his hair back. If she’s surprised to see the scar she doesn’t show it, and says simply, “He has a fever.”

 

A fever. Harry is sick. Children get sick, Remus thinks to himself, stunned and panicked further because they didn’t anticipate or recognize something so typical.

 

“Are there potions for that?” Sirius asks. “You probably can’t give a baby Pepper-up.”

 

Andromeda smiles. “No, you can’t. Go to the pharmacy and get infants’ paracetamol.”

 

Remus knows paracetamol, of course he knows paracetamol, but he double checks anyway, “The muggle pharmacy?”

 

“Yes. And a box of popsicles.”

 

“I’ll go,” Remus says.

 

“I’ll watch him. You two go,” Andromeda says and Sirius looks like he’s about to protest, “Go. Get some fresh air. It’ll help.”

 

The 24-hour pharmacy is empty except for a middle aged man at the cash register, staring above their heads at a small television and a more chipper young woman stocking shampoos. She leads them over to the infants’ paracetamol and watches as Sirius and Remus stare at the wide variety of options-- dissolvable chewables or the syrupy liquid kind, some that say fever reducer and some that say sore throat, grape and cherry and orange flavors of each.

 

“How old is yours?” she asks genially.

 

“Eighteen months,” Remus answers distractedly, eyes skimming over sugar-free options.

 

The young woman plucks a box off the shelf. “Mine likes the cherry flavor. Just turned three.”

 

Remus finally turns to look at her. Her permed hair is pulled up in a frizzy ponytail and her red vest sports a name tag that says Melanie. “Thank you.”

 

She smiles wide. “It’s no problem. It’s scary at first isn’t it?” Remus nods as she leads them to a cash register. “I was on my own-- boyfriend took off as soon as I told him. Least I knew not to count on him. It’s hard though, on your own, and working too,” she chatters as she rings them up. “I got lucky though, my manager here is a single mum too, understands I need to take off when Sarah’s sick-- that’s my daughter’s name. Sometimes Omar watches her”-- she nods at the man watching telly, “He’s not as grumpy as he looks,” she whispers. She bags the medicine and sticks the receipt inside. “Good luck!” she says cheerily as they leave.

 

“Can you imagine doing this alone?” Sirius asks Remus on the way back.

 

Remus shakes his head. He can’t even imagine how Sirius gets through the day while Remus is at university. He’s not sure he really provides that much help. He’s probably about as helpful as Omar.

 

Just outside the door to their flat Sirius stops him with a touch to to his elbow. “I don’t think I could do this without you,” Sirius says. He looks so sincere, so lovely, but Remus has no idea what he could possibly be thinking of.

 

He swallows through a lump in his throat and tries to laugh it off. “Everyone needs an Omar.”

 

Sirius looks at him frowning, “Do you really think you’re an Omar? I’m sure Omar is great but you do a lot more than that.”

 

Remus looks down and away, “You’re the one who stays home with him all day.”

 

Sirius tightens his grip on Remus’ elbow and steps a little closer. “So that you can go to _school_ Remus, you’re not at the local getting pissed.” Remus shrugs and Sirius lets out a frustrated noise. “Remus I don’t know what I would’ve done without you. We might not be doing this at all-- I was on my way to _kill_ Peter.” Remus laughs. “And you were the one who thought to go to get formula and diapers and bottles while I was losing my mind. You moved all our stuff out that horrible cottage! In the middle of the night! Without a bloody coat, you madman. And most of the time it’s you getting up with Harry in the middle of the night, even though you’ve got class in the morning.” Sirius shakes Remus’ arm a little. “Come on Remus, how could you not know?” Remus smiles a little shyly, pleased and embarrassed. “You must just be fishing for compliments, there’s no way you could be so dense,” Sirius teases.

 

Remus reaches out and shoves Sirius. “All right, shut up,” he says grinning.

 

Sirius shakes his head at him, still marveling in disbelief, “Bloody Omar,” he mumbles, pushing open the door.

 

Remus stops him a moment, “I definitely couldn’t do this without you,” Remus says; it’s just true. Sirius gives his elbow a squeeze and they go inside.

 

Harry is still crying, but much quieter, little intermittent whimpers that Andromeda hushes softly. She’s transfigured one of the kitchen chairs into a rocking chair and has Harry’s head resting in the crook of her shoulder and a cool flannel on the back of his neck. Remus feels calmed watching her leisurely rocking.

 

“He has such beautiful eyes,” she says.

 

“Lily’s,” Sirius says with a sad smile.

 

“Did you find everything?”

 

Remus hands her the paracetamol and she shows them the chart with the dosage information and measures a small amount in a little syringe. Sirius looks worried. “What are you going to do with it?”

 

Andromeda laughs. “I’m going to put it in his mouth, Sirius.”

 

Remus holds him while Andromeda expertly pops the syringe in his mouth and is done before he has a chance to realize he hates it and Remus is sure they’re not going to be able to achieve the same result so gracefully. She wipes a little drop of medicine from the corner of his mouth with her pinky finger, presses it back into his mouth, and stands up straight.

 

“Is that all?” Sirius asks.

 

“That’s it. Feed him popsicles, make sure he gets lots of water. You can put him in a lukewarm bath-- not too cold. And call me if you need anything-- we have a _phone_.” She says the last part a little pointedly, a very polite way of saying please don’t be stupid.

 

“We should get a phone,” Sirius says once she’s left.

 

 

Sirius wakes up at 8:00 the next morning and wanders into Harry’s room. “Shouldn’t you be at school?” he asks Remus in a sleep rough voice.

 

“I asked Marlene to swap sections with me. I’ll go in this afternoon.”

 

Remus moved the transfigured rocking chair up into Harry’s room in the middle of the night and Harry is sleeping on Remus’ chest. His little mouth is pursed into a frown but he’s sleeping deeply and Remus is worn out and a little satisfied too.

 

Sirius comes to sit down on the floor by Remus, resting his head on Remus’ knee and yawning loudly. “Do you want a break?”

 

“I’m ok,” Remus answers.

 

Sirius sits by him a while longer, fingertips running lazily along the bones of Remus’ foot and ankle until Remus falls asleep sitting up. He wakes up a couple hours laters to Harry’s cries and a familiar rich smell. He finds Sirius in the kitchen, humming Watching the Wheels while he washes up. There’s a pot of soup on the hob that Sirius has never made before.

 

“Is that my mum’s minestrone?”

 

“It’s an approximation of your mum’s minestrone according to my skill level.”

 

“It smells the same.”

 

Sirius smiles. Remus wants to kiss him; stand behind him at the sink and kiss his ears and neck and press his mouth to the hair fanned out on his shoulder and just rest there. He wants to wrap the arm not holding Harry around Sirius’ thin stomach and feel his ribs, check to make sure they aren’t poking out too much. He wants Sirius so badly.

  


* * *

 

Remus crawls quietly back into bed after checking on Harry. He hasn't cried all night and it was setting Remus on edge, lying sleepless in bed unable to stop imagining the worst-- had Harry’s fever gone up again? was he just so sick he couldn’t even cry? had he rolled over in bed and suffocated? After an hour or two of failing to convince himself he was overreacting, he gave in to the immediate peace of mind of just checking on Harry. And he was fine, breathing the sweet stuffy breaths of always being a little snotty, one little fist pushed into his eye, blankets in no way threatening strangulation.

 

Remus shuffles back to bed, still restless, but now with nothing to pin his worries on.

 

Another hour. Jittery. Dying to sleep. He checks that Sirius is well and truly asleep and  turns his back to him. He slides his hand under the waistband of his pajamas with as little movement as possible and starts pulling on his half hard cock. It's been months since he last masturbated-- too sick with lethargy, then too busy and too exhausted to stay awake another ten minutes-- he pulls slowly, not needing to get off, just wanting a good feeling to focus on to calm down. He touches himself gently, running his fingers through his pubic hair and sliding his palm slowly over his groin.

 

Sirius rolls over and Remus freezes. He can feel his heart beating too fast for the breaths he's holding.

 

"Remus," Sirius mumbles in a sleep scratchy voice. "Let me." Sirius places a warm hand on Remus' arm, the arm that's beneath the covers, beneath his pants. "Let me," Sirius asks again.

 

Remus pulls his hand out of his pants and covers his face with it, groaning in annoyance. "You prick. You’re supposed to do the decent thing and pretend to be asleep," Remus half-jokes.

 

Sirius huffs a laugh and shifts closer to press himself up against Remus' back, he presses a little kiss to Remus' shoulder blade. "Want you so much. Remus, let me."

 

Remus sits up abruptly and looks down at Sirius. Sirius tilts his head to look back at Remus. He’s so bloody beautiful, sharp cheekbones and sharp collar bones and his hair spread out all over the pillow.

 

Remus wonders what he’s holding out for. Sirius wants to raise a kid with him, share a bed with him, have sex with him, talk with him at dinner. What does Remus want that Sirius isn’t already giving him?

 

It’s just this sense of unevenness. This feeling Remus has that Sirius works himself into Remus’ pores, the agitation Remus feels as Sirius pulls and pushes on Remus’ insides. He can't stand the thought of Sirius living _alongside_ him, sleeping _next_ to him while Remus feels the constant onslaught of Sirius' hair and smell and and corded arms pressing in on him.

 

He pushes Sirius' shoulder down, gently and firmly, pressing him into the bed on his stomach and moving to kneel between Sirius' legs. Sirius pushes up his hips to help Remus pull his pajamas partway down.

 

They’ve never done this, Remus hasn’t allowed himself to think about it very much, not wanting to succumb further to his longing for Sirius. But he knows he wants it. Remus smooths his hands over Sirius' arse cheeks, soft and yielding, pulls them slightly apart and licks his tongue into his crack. Sirius gasps and whispers "Holy shit," clearly surprised, before groaning as Remus does it again. "Christ, Remus, wait a second," he says as Remus continues licking around Sirius' hole, marveling at its softness, as Sirius stretches an arm out to blindly grope for his wand, whispering a cleaning charm Remus never would have thought Sirius knew and burying his face into a pillow with a groan. A sweet yielding. A boneless overwhelmed yielding that belongs to _Remus_.

 

Remus digs his fingers in and buries his head in Sirius’ arse. He presses his whole face, his whole body, into Sirius’ arse, nose pushed up against his tailbone so hard he can’t breathe so he presses himself in harder, gets so dizzy and drunk on Sirius, wants Sirius so sloppy and wet and open.

 

The skin here is so _soft_ , the same thin red swollen skin of Sirius’ lips, his lovely mouth, gently pursed, another soft hole to love-- Remus is so tired of feeling full, so tired of the swell of stimuli and words and feelings surging up to the surface only to settle again-- he pushes his tongue in, loves the soft sucking of Sirius’ hole drawing him in.

 

He licks in as deeply as he can, pulls Sirius’ cheeks apart further to lick in even deeper, rolls his tongue around luxuriating and moaning into the sweet soft sucking here. He wants to be _inside_ Sirius, wants to slip inside Sirius like a letter tucked into the envelope that will carry it to the right place. He feels a pulse of intense frustration that he can’t lick in further, deeper. He pulls Sirius' arse cheeks apart again, kneads and rolls them taking a quick gasping breath and pushes his tongue back as deeply as he can, licking and pushing, no air, soft skin, soft pliant muscle pressing all around his face.

 

Sirius' legs start shaking. Remus fucks his tongue in, drags his tongue all over Sirius' impossibly soft walls, on every part of this soft little space for Remus to fill. When Sirius starts to let out little sobs, Remus pulls back, just a little, just to rub his face against Sirius' arse, licking all around his crack with a flat tongue and a thrill at making Sirius so wet, so sloppy. "Do you want me to stop?" he asks Sirius and Sirius shakes his head violently with a sobbed _no_ and shoves his hand under his body to touch his cock. Remus grips his hips, pulling on him to lift up and Sirius slowly pulls his shaking legs underneath him one at a time.

 

Remus leans back in to seal his mouth around Sirius' hole and suck, a long sloppy sucking kiss to Sirius’ rosebud of a rim. Remus is lapping all over his crease, sucking and slurping at his hole, spit dripping out the corners of his mouth all over, spreads his spit all over Sirius' messy hole.

 

Sirius is getting close, fisting his cock steadily and holding his breath. Remus fucks his tongue quickly back in as Sirius starts to come with a sob and his hole clenches and pulses so hard around Remus' tongue that it's pushed right out. Remus licks over the clenching muscle as Sirius shakes and squirms and shivers, letting out sharp gasps every time Remus drags the flat of his tongue back over his pulsing hole.

 

Remus can't pull back, pressing his face in again to rub his lips on Sirius' rim, so gently, so so gently on the puffed skin there, nibbling it between his lips so lightly until Sirius jolts and kicks one leg out, pushing Remus away. Sirius waves an arm back trying to grab Remus-- "Fuck, come here." Remus stretches Sirius' other leg out from underneath him and Sirius whimpers "come here come here come here" and Remus lays his body over Sirius' still sometimes convulsing shivering wreck of a body that Remus was deep inside.

 

Remus lays his body out over Sirius'. His legs on Sirius' legs, his stomach pressed on top of Sirius's back. His face tucked into the warm space Sirius is shuddering and panting into. Sirius shivers and shivers and Remus finds himself shivering too. It's hard to breathe in the warm air being traded between them and Remus' nose and chin and cheeks are still wet, now cooling. And he's never understood the countless things he's read about the oblivion of loving someone, poetic ramblings about sex and death and love as some kind of irrevocable precipice. But he understands now. His arms are numb, his legs are numb, he can't feel his fingers like the all the feeling of his body is all dissolving into Sirius’ body that’s shaking and shaking with absorbing it all, with taking all of Remus in. Remus is gone gone gone, just a numb body, just a wet spot that can hardly breathe.

 

Sirius turns his head a little more, turns to strain up to kiss Remus' lips. Remus didn't think Sirius would kiss him after that, didn’t think that for all Remus’ loves Sirius’ arsehole that Sirius could love Remus’ mouth. But Sirius is trying, he can hardly reach, pressed into the bed still by Remus collapsed on top of him, but he stretches enough to touch his lips to Remus', tingling, and Remus can't even think about the oblivion anymore as he shifts just a little bit off Sirius to shove his mouth against his, to push his tongue into another warm space that Sirius is offering and lick around. He licks up Sirius' palate and the backs of his teeth and Sirius just shudders and pants as Remus pulls on his lips, pulls on them hard and bites them and then licks in all over again.

 

Sirius turns his head into the bed a little, and pants and whispers "Remus," calls Remus back to himself, to the permeable boundaries of his body, but Remus doesn't want to go, he licks into Sirius' ear, licks the tip of his tongue into every shallow path of Sirius' ear, sucks the soft lobe as hard as he can. "Remus, Remus," Sirius pants out. Remus wants to cry and scream don't make me go back there, wants to stay outside himself just a little longer.

 

Sirius shifts underneath him and Remus, sliding off him onto the bed, wants to shove him for calling Remus back. And he does, he pushes his hand hard into his shoulder as Sirius wraps his arms around Remus' body that isn't numb anymore, pushes him hard even as Remus leans in to kiss him again. Sirius gathers him up, one arm around his waist, one pressing up the length of his back, hand cradling the back of Remus’ head, Sirius rests a leg heavily over him, everywhere Sirius is gathering Remus back together, pressing him back in, holding him together.

 

Remus finally lets out a sob and realizes his face is still wet not from smeared spit, but from tears. He digs his hands into Sirius' shirt, clenching the material tightly in his fists. Sirius is mumbling softly into his ear, "Shh Moony Remus It's ok it's ok Remus." Remus hiccups and gasps trying to hold back racking sobs and cries harder when he can't. "It's all right Moony. It'll be alright. We'll be ok."

 

Remus cries and cries, and it works; Remus sheds himself into Sirius' shirt until he's exhausted, limp. He roughly rubs his face dry on Sirius' shirt and tucks his face into the pool of dark hair on Sirius' pillow and breathes in the smell of it. Empty again, he fills himself up with the smell of Sirius' hair and Sirius whispers in his ear, "what do you want?" rubbing his hand up and down Remus' back, sucking sweetly on Remus' ear. "what do you want? anything, Remus. whatever you want." And Remus, smudged and blurry, pulls on the arm underneath him and says "give me your fingers" and Sirius doesn't say a word as Remus grips his wrist and sucks his fingers into his mouth, holds them there and sucks, but he does kiss Remus' face, little kisses to the corner of his mouth and his cheek and the crinkle of his eye, his forehead, small tingling kisses that Remus loses track of. He drifts off, unable to suck anymore but deliriously overwhelmed with gratitude that Sirius somehow knows to keep his fingers in Remus' slack mouth.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please visit smelslikeart at their tumblr!  
> https://www.tumblr.com/search/smelslikeart


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please visit smelslikeart at their tumblr!  
> https://www.tumblr.com/search/smelslikeart

Remus wakes up to a fairly wet pillow, dried come on his shirt, and Sirius dead asleep with his pajama bottoms still partway down his legs. It can't be much later; it's still dark and it still smells like sex.

 

Remus has never felt so laid out, so insubstantial and terrified, like a Schiele drawing, his bruised colors blooming up to the surface to be washed away.

 

He can’t help it: he puts on a coat over his flannel pajamas with the come and slips out the door into the hallway, closing it quietly and taking the stairs down at a run, barrelling out of the building onto the street. Standing outside in the early hours of morning, in the cold, still dark, Remus pants and knows very well he should go back inside.

 

He turns left and pounds down the hill past London Bridge station to the Thames and takes the stairs down to the wide walkway. The river is dark and ruffled and chill. He walks along it, shivering, trailing behind chugging industrial looking ships. It smells like petrol and musty river water and Remus’ flannel pajamas bottoms are no match for the breeze blowing continuously off the water.

 

He walks and walks, head almost clear, until he finds himself clear across London at his mum’s building.

 

Remus slows his breakneck pace as he goes up the stairs. He doesn’t want to wake her. He opens the door as quietly as he can, but can do nothing about the crackly noise of the paint unsticking. He sits down in the living room, by the window that faces out toward the street, which has all the same sounds Remus heard all across London: bags of bottles set out, the heavy hum of street sweepers going by, the occasional bit of drunken carousing.

 

Remus feels dazed, like all the parts of himself he poured into Sirius last night didn’t come rushing back. Like there’s something still lingering outside of himself, wrapped around Sirius and Harry and floating around their flat all the way across town. Like his skin cells and fallen out hairs and the words he’s spoken and his sweat and the tears he’d cried into Sirius last night and all the ink on his papers and his little habits have all commingled into something solid there, something solid that he’s left behind. And not just his tears and ink and skin cells, but Harry’s and Sirius’ too-- Harry’s cries and gurgling and spitting and Sirius’ humming and washing, their towels all hung side by side in the bathroom, all smelling like Harry’s baby shampoo. They’re all tangled up and Remus knows he can never hope to extricate himself.

 

His mum’s flat has picture frames up on the walls now-- pictures of Remus and bright paintings of flowers. Familiar tables set out by the couch, stacks of books and childhood crafts and an old lamp set on top. Remus thinks of the now bare walls in their flat, stripped of the old dirty wallpaper and ready for painting, and the large row of paned windows, all the grime cleaned out of the corners. The couch Sirius found and the toys scattered in front of it, the baby blankets and the ever present pile of clean laundry waiting to be folded. All his books and papers on the kitchen table, how they have to shift the piles every time they sit down eat. He thinks of the pots and bowls and kitchen utensils Sirius is slowly accumulating, their cabinets filling out, their fridge full of ingredients. He thinks of coming home and hearing Sirius babbling to Harry, the rare and wonderful times when Harry babbles back.

 

He thinks about how much he wants to be back there, how good it feels to be submerged in their mingled sounds and smells. How much he loves to look up from his books and see Sirius and Harry. He feels overwhelmed with love for them, and for the first time, considers that it feels _good_. Remus doesn’t feel broken up and invaded, he feels entwined, all wrapped up warmly together. 

 

Remus stays by the window until his mum wakes up and shuffles down the hall, just to give her a kiss on the cheek and tell her he loves her, and then walks calmly down the stairs again, out his mother’s building and down the block to the alleyway he prefers to apparate from.

 

As he lets himself into their flat he startles--  Sirius is in the entryway, Harry snugly tucked into a carrier on his chest, with his leather jacket zipped up over the top, so that just a little tuft of black hair can be seen.

 

“I was coming home,” Remus says. He knows what this looks like.

 

“Yeah well. I was coming to get you again,” Sirius says angrily.

 

Sirius was coming to get him. Again. It finally clicks into recognition that Sirius _won’t let him leave_. That all of Remus’ self-pitying predictions of having to leave eventually are his own bullshit because each time Remus melodramatically unravels out and away Sirius winds him back in, knits him back into the snug, warm life they’re making. Sirius wants Remus around enough to deal with all of Remus’ raw edges.

 

Remus is buzzing. “You don’t have to. I’ll come back. I’m not leaving,” he promises fervently.

 

Sirius turns around and takes off his jacket. “Leave a fucking note you absolute wanker. It should go without saying that I don’t like not knowing where the fuck you are and when you’re coming back.” Sirius takes off the carrier and walks with Harry into the kitchen and Remus follows behind him. “It should also go without saying that after a night like last night I don’t want to wake up alone,” Sirius says quietly, still not looking at Remus.

 

“Sirius,” Remus whispers, stepping forward and wrapping his arms around Sirius’ waist. “I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry.” Remus presses his cheek into Sirius’ shoulder blade.

 

“Aren’t you late for school?” Sirius asks, like he’s just so tired.

 

“Please Sirius. I’m so sorry I left you alone. I don’t want to leave you alone,” Remus squeezes his arms tighter around Sirius. “All the time I don’t want to leave you alone. I want to kiss your neck and touch your hair while you wash the dishes and pull you over to kiss me every time you walk by the table when I’m studying. _All the time._  It’s awful.” Sirius leans his body back into Remus and his heavy weight feels so good. “I know I’m a fucking mess Sirius, I know I am. I didn’t know you wanted me to stay. It was stupid but I didn’t know.”

 

“I want you to stay.” Sirius turns his head to the side and Remus stretches up to kiss his cheek. “And I also don’t want you to miss your morning class entirely.”

 

Remus lets him go and steps back.

 

Sirius turns and looks at him, exasperated and tired and sad but a little more than that too. “Will we talk tonight? You won’t come home and do that inoffensive wallpaper person thing?”

 

“What inoffensive wallpaper person thing?”

 

“That thing you do where everything you say is a weirdly bland script, like you’re practicing to be on the wall of the sitting room that hosts the ladies’ society for polite manners and… and repression.”

 

He’d thought-- he’d thought Sirius didn’t know-- he thought he’d pulled off calm and even and mild, that Sirius didn’t know underneath was panic and anger and uncertainty. He didn’t know Sirius knew him that way.  Remus feels startled and wonders if it shows on his face, but then he laughs. “The ladies’ society for polite manners and repression?”

 

Sirius laughs too. “Yes it’s ridiculous,” he sobers a little, “So you’re not allowed to do that when you get home.”

 

“Ok.”

 

Remus gathers together the books and parchments he’ll need for the day and packs up his bag. Sirius is watching warily, like Remus will start breaking out in a tasteful floral pattern as soon as he steps out the door. Remus steps close and presses a kiss to Harry’s baby soft hair and then leans up to press a quick kiss to Sirius’ lips.

 

“I’ll see you tonight,” he says and steps out the door.

 

At the end of the day, Remus wonders if it really made much of a difference that he went to all his classes because he’d spent most of them distractedly trying to come up with what to say to Sirius. He walks over to a small dead-end sidestreet near campus to apparate, still distractedly trying to think of anything good enough to say, until loud revving and putting noises make him look up. Sirius is touching down on the motorbike on the side street.

 

“I really am coming home. I’m literally about to apparate.” Remus says, a little exasperated to see Sirius coming to collect him.

 

To his surprise Sirius smiles wide, he’s glowing with happiness and vibrating a little with energy. “I know, you’d never leave your library books.” He swings one leg over the bike and bounces over close to Remus.

 

 

 

“Moony, listen to this,” He says, still bouncing a little, and unzipping his jacket so that Harry’s face is revealed. Harry squeals when he sees Remus and Remus reaches out to smooth his thumb over the hair at Harry’s temple. Harry tries to bounce in the carrier. Sirius bends his head down and says in a clear and intent voice, “Moony,” drawing out and separating the syllables just so. “Moony.”

 

Harry hums an “mmm” back at him.

 

“Moony,” Sirius says again. Harry hums back at him again, eyes bright and smiling wonderingly up at Sirius, clearing enjoying the humming game.

 

“He did it back at the apartment, I swear,” Sirius says.

 

“Maybe he was just making noises.”

 

“No, it was clear as day. I went in to get him after his nap and he was asking for you.” Sirius tries again, this time pointing at Remus, saying “Look Harry, it’s Moony. Moony’s here. Moony.”

 

Harry giggles.

 

“Come on Remus. You say it.”

 

Remus points his finger at himself and repeats “Moony” and Sirius does it too, just after. And then Harry, reaching a little hand out of Sirius’ jacket, fingers straining toward Remus says, “Moo-ny,” in two staccato little bursts in his sweet high voice and Remus feels tears at the corners of his eyes and reaches out to give Harry two of his fingers to hold on to, and then, his other hand finds the back of Sirius’ head and hauls him into a hard kiss above Harry’s head. Remus can feel Harry’s little legs kicking out joyfully as he bounces himself in the carrier and he can feel both of Sirius’ hands come up to hold Remus’ face, to tug at his hair. Sirius keeps Remus pressed close into their kiss, lips still and pressed hard into each other.

 

They break apart, just a little, the three of them still huddled close together, and Sirius says wonderingly, “Moony,” and Harry echos him, a little more punctuated, confidently commanding Remus’ attention. Remus looks down and presses a soft kiss to the top of his head, “Yes Harry, Moony, that’s so good. You’re talking.” He looks back up at Sirius. “He’s talking,” Remus says in awe.

 

“I know!” Sirius is absolutely bursting with joy.

 

“He said my name.”

 

“I say your name a lot.”

 

Remus pulls him in for another kiss and then breaks off-- “It’s not just the bloody library books I wouldn’t leave,” he says a little annoyed.

 

Sirius combs his fingers through Remus’ hair and presses his lips together to hold back a smile at Remus’ expense. “Mm hmm.”

 

“Come on, I can’t have this conversation in an alleyway.”

 

“Get on the bike, we’ll all go home together.”

 

Remus rolls his eyes. “Nice try. I’ll meet you there.”

 

When Remus gets home he stays in the entryway, bouncing and waiting for Sirius. He feels a little silly but he can’t help it; he meets him at the door. He stands awkwardly watching Sirius take the carrier off, and rushes forward to hold Harry and then stays just to watch Sirius take his shoes off. Sirius smiles at him and squeezes his hand as he walks into the flat.

 

As soon as they walk into the kitchen there are Remus’ books on the table and a high chair that really needs a good wiping down and if Sirius doesn’t start on dinner soon then Harry is going to start in on the crying soon. They get swept up in the things that need to be done, pull of their routine drawing them through the night.

 

Sirius makes dinner and Remus does his reading and Harry sits on the kitchen floor banging a wooden spoon against a pot. It makes Remus’ reading difficult but he doesn’t want to leave their warm little kitchen. Because it’s not just dinner and reading and smacking pots, it’s Sirius wandering over to Remus at the kitchen table and leaning into him, scratching his fingers through Remus’ hair, and Remus pressing a kiss to Sirius’ stomach.

 

It’s not until after dinner and cleaning up dinner, bathtime and cleaning up bathtime, stories and tantrums and bedtime, that Sirius and Remus get to talk.

 

Harry finally down to sleep, they stand side by side brushing their teeth and unapologetically looking at each other in the mirror. Sirius grins around his toothbrush and spits.

 

“I see you’re wearing the spider pants.”

 

“Yeah I was in the mood to feel itchy. I hope imagined crawling sensations keep you up all night.”

 

Sirius just pats Remus’ arsecheek on the way out of the bathroom.

 

Sirius tugs Remus down onto their bed and rolls halfway on top of him, propped up on one elbow so that he’s looking down at Remus’ face. Remus likes the position, likes the way Sirius’ hair falls forward enclosing them, hiding them from everything but each other; he likes Sirius’ hand on his hip bone, thumb moving back and forth, anchoring him to the bed.

 

“So you took off this morning because you didn’t know I wanted you to stay?”

 

“No, something else.”

 

Sirius bends down to give Remus a gentle, lingering kiss. “Go on, tell me.”

 

Remus closes his eyes, has to shut his eyes tight to say this, even within the safety of Sirius’ curtain of hair. “Everything is just so much all the time. Just walking around with all the thoughts in my head-- there’s so much and there’s only ever more and more and you’re so overwhelming. God you’re so overwhelming-- in such a _good_ way but I didn’t think I could have you. All the time you were overwhelming me and it was like, I was breaking down. I couldn’t take it. And then last night I thought I’d fuck you and you’d fall apart and instead I fucked you and I fell apart.”

 

“I fell apart too.”

 

“It feels terrifying Sirius, coming apart like that.”

 

Sirius bends down again for another long slow kiss. He smooths Remus’ hair away from his temple, gently holding the side of his face. “You really don’t have to hold yourself together all the time.”

 

Remus shakes his head. “I don’t want anyone to see, I don’t want anyone to know.”

 

“See what?”

 

Remus shakes his head again, eyes and lips squeezed shut. Sirius keeps combing his fingers through Remus’ hair and leans down again, to whisper right into Remus’ ear. “I know you’re angry. And I know that you’re gay.”

 

A lump forms in Remus throat, he’s close to tears, hearing that Sirius sees those things. Sirius kisses his earlobe and then says, still so quietly, “It’s ok to want me.”

 

Remus chokes out a kind of laughing sob. “I want you so much. All the time.” 

 

Sirius pulls back to look him in the eye and Remus looks back. Looks at Sirius’ gray eyes and the way he’s looking at Remus so seriously, a look of awe. Remus pulls Sirius down to kiss him, really snog him. He threads his fingers through Sirius’ thick hair and Sirius wraps his arms around Remus and presses into him; Sirius keeps them pressed so hard together that Remus has that feeling-- that the boundaries of his body are so terribly permeable, that he could fall apart so easily-- if not for Sirius holding him so close, holding all of Remus’ edges together in his arms, holding him together when Remus can’t anymore.

Sirius rests his forehead against Remus’, still holding Remus tightly to him. “Are you going to freak out in the middle of the night and run clear across the city?” he teases.

 

Remus bites Sirius’ lip and says, “Maybe just to spite you.”

 

“Oh good. I was thinking of maybe getting a stroller, Harry and I could use the exercise.”

 

Remus laughs and nestles his face into Sirius’ warm neck, breathing in the smell of his hair, and lets the soft lines of his body melt into Sirius.  

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please visit smelslikeart at their tumblr!  
> https://www.tumblr.com/search/smelslikeart
> 
>  
> 
> thank you so much for reading! <3  
> https://www.tumblr.com/blog/bigblckdog


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